2.1 Clinical Decision Support

Abstract

Most of decision theory is concerned with identifying the best decision to make (in practice, there are situations in which “best” is not necessarily the optimum, and may also include values within a specific or approximate range), assuming an ideal decision maker who is fully informed, able to compute with perfect accuracy, and fully rational. The practical application of this prescriptive approach (how people ought to make decisions) is called decision analysis, and aimed at finding tools, methodologies and software to help people make better decisions. The most systematic and comprehensive software tools developed in this way are called decision support systems (CDS).