Evidence map›Paper›PMID 30590557›Full record

ArticleJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA2019

Cranky comments: detecting clinical decision support malfunctions through free-text override reasons.

Skye Aaron, Dustin S McEvoy, Soumi Ray, Thu-Trang T Hickman, Adam Wright

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
26citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

26 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Trial
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. The Burden of a Highly Targeted Alert.Applied clinical informatics · 2025
    Article
  8. Review
  9. A scoping review of rule-based clinical decision support malfunctions.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2024
    Article
  10. Article
  11. Leveraging explainable artificial intelligence to optimize clinical decision support.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2024
    Article
  12. Article
  13. Combining text mining with clinical decision support in clinical practice: a scoping review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2023
    Article
  14. Using automated methods to detect safety problems with health information technology: a scoping review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2023
    Article
  15. Clinical decision support malfunctions related to medication routes: a case series.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2022
    Article
  16. Article
  17. Clinician collaboration to improve clinical decision support: the Clickbusters initiative.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2022
    Article
  18. Review
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Skye AaronDivision of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Dustin S McEvoyPartners eCare, Partners HealthCare, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Soumi RayDivision of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Thu-Trang T HickmanPartners Community Health, Partners HealthCare, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Adam WrightDivision of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Funding

Improving clinical decision support reliability using anomaly detection methodsR01LM011966 · NLM · VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER · PI WRIGHT, ADAM T · 2014 to 2017
$2.4M
NLM NIH HHS R01 LM011966
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Background: Rule-base clinical decision support alerts are known to malfunction, but tools for discovering malfunctions are limited. Objective: Investigate whether user override comments can be used to discover malfunctions. Methods: We manually classified all rules in our database with at least 10 override comments into 3 categories based on a sample of override comments: "broken," "not broken, but could be improved," and "not broken." We used 3 methods (frequency of comments, cranky word list heuristic, and a Naïve Bayes classifier trained on a sample of comments) to automatically rank rules based on features of their override comments. We evaluated each ranking using the manual classification as truth. Results: Of the rules investigated, 62 were broken, 13 could be improved, and the remaining 45 were not broken. Frequency of comments performed worse than a random ranking, with precision at 20 of 8 and AUC = 0.487. The cranky comments heuristic performed better with precision at 20 of 16 and AUC = 0.723. The Naïve Bayes classifier had precision at 20 of 17 and AUC = 0.738. Discussion: Override comments uncovered malfunctions in 26% of all rules active in our system. This is a lower bound on total malfunctions and much higher than expected. Even for low-resource organizations, reviewing comments identified by the cranky word list heuristic may be an effective and feasible way of finding broken alerts. Conclusion: Override comments are a rich data source for finding alerts that are broken or could be improved. If possible, we recommend monitoring all override comments on a regular basis.

Indexed as

Decision Support Systems, ClinicalElectronic Health RecordsIrritable MoodMedical Order Entry SystemsBayes TheoremDocumentationHumansMedication ErrorsROC Curve

Identifiers

PMID30590557
PMCPMC6308015

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LicenceCC BY-NC
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.