Patient facing decision support system for interpretation of laboratory test results

BACKGROUND: In some healthcare systems, it is common that patients address laboratory test centers directly without a physician’s recommendation. This practice is widely spread in Russia with about 28% of patients who visiting laboratory test centers for diagnostics. This causes an issue when patients get no help from the physician in understanding the results. Computer decision support systems proved to efficiently solve a resource consuming task of interpretation of the test results. So, a decision support system can be implemented to rise motivation and empower the patients who visit a laboratory service without a doctor’s referral. METHODS: We have developed a clinical decision support system for patients that solves a classification task and finds a set of diagnoses for the provided laboratory tests results. The Wilson and Lankton’s assessment model was applied to measure patients’ acceptance of the solution. RESULTS: A first order predicates-based decision support system has been implemented to analyze laboratory test results and deliver reports in natural language to patients. The evaluation of the system showed a high acceptance of the decision support system and of the reports that it generates. CONCLUSIONS: Detailed notification of the laboratory service patients with elements of the decision support is significant for the laboratory data management, and for patients’ empowerment and safety. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12911-018-0648-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.