Clinical Decision Support Tools for Microbiology Laboratory Testing

Microbiology clinical laboratory testing has a vital impact on diagnostic and treatment decisions for patients with infectious diseases, but poor utilization can lead to diagnostic errors, overuse of antibiotics, and increased hospital stays for unnecessary treatment. Traditional efforts to improve test utilization, such as education and one-on-one engagement with clinicians, are not always effective at achieving widespread and long-lasting benefits. Clinical decision support (CDS), the use of computer and communication technology to improve clinical decision making, is one option to improve test utilization at an institutional level with minimal day-to-day effort. In this article, examples of CDS are introduced to demonstrate both the potential of CDS to improve microbiology test utilization and the challenges involved in its implementation and maintenance.