PhD student Brian Douthit and Rachel Richesson, associate professor, contributed to the "Real World Evidence: Clinical Decision Support" chapter of the NIH Collaboratory Living Textbook of Pragmatic Clinical Trials.  

According to the Living Textbook's web page, the chapter describes special considerations and best practices for designing and evaluating clinical decision support (CDS) for use in embedded pragmatic clinical trials (ePCTs). CDS functionality can support recruitment, enable the delivery of a new intervention, or be the intervention under evaluation.

The main topics of the chapter are:

• Introduction to Clinical Decision Support

• Definitions and Uses for CDS

• Uses of CDS in Pragmatic Clinical Trials: Experience From the NIH Collaboratory Studies

• Designing and Building CDS Tools for Pragmatic Trials

• Evaluating CDS

• Disseminating and Sharing CDS

The chapter also includes several case examples of CDS used to support the NIH Collaboratory Demonstration Projects. 

Keith Allen Marsolo with Duke's Population Health Sciences and Clinical Research Institute and Lesley H. Curtis with the Duke School of Medicine were among the other authors.