Context
In recent decades, hospitals have undergone an IT revolution aimed at improving patient care.
However, the computerization of patient records has also brought new challenges. One of the main challenges facing healthcare establishments is the integration of medical decision support systems (CDS) and clinical quality measurement systems (CQM), with the aim of achieving meaningful use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs).
These challenges are compounded by the lack of specification as to the exchange format of business logic to be applied to stored information, in existing formats, forcing developers to manually translate and implement specifications in their development environment.
This can lead to errors and inefficiencies, which in turn can increase production costs. In addition, this approach considerably hampers the fluidity of data exchange between healthcare organizations.
The Magic Solution: CQL
CQL (Clinical Quality Language) is an authoring language standard developed by Health Level Seven International® (HL7®) and designed to be a high-level language, easy to use and understand by healthcare professionals. One of its main objectives is to promote clinical quality, making it an ideal choice for electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) and clinical decision support systems (CDS).
One of the main benefits of CQL is its ability to promote a shared understanding of clinical knowledge. By providing a standardized representation, CQL enables the use of a common language and framework to express clinical logic. This promotes interoperability and facilitates the exchange of knowledge between different systems and organizations.
In addition, CQL facilitates the direct sharing of clinical knowledge artifacts by defining a serialization format for the canonical representation of logic. This serialization enables the seamless transfer of clinical knowledge between different tools and systems, eliminating the need for custom translations or complex mappings between different standards.
A key advantage of CQL is its human readability, which reduces the clinical burden by enabling clinicians to specify computable logic without having to write requirements and wait for results to evaluate them. CQL is so simple that clinicians can even modify and write the clinical logic themselves.
Adopting CQL offers many benefits for the healthcare industry. It simplifies the process of creating and sharing clinical knowledge artifacts, facilitating interoperability. With a clear, standardized representation of clinical logic, developers can more easily implement support and measures systems, leading to a reduction in implementation costs.
Accelerate Your Transition to CQL with Fyrstain
Fyrstain offers comprehensive training in the CQL language and supports companies and hospitals in the implementation of medical decision support (CDS) and clinical quality measurement (CQM) systems. We are here to help you take full advantage of the benefits offered by CQL, guiding you every step of the way, from design to implementation.
To learn more about the language of clinical quality, contact us at contact@fyrstain.com.
