Pharmacy AI · Module 3 · Unit 1 — Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS)

CDSS Alert Management Console

Aim — To review a patient's EHR and new prescription, interpret the alerts generated by a Clinical Decision Support System, triage each alert by severity, take the correct clinical action and safely manage alert fatigue. Duration 60 minutes · One case per student · 100-mark rubric · Pass 50%.

Case —
Score —
Result —
◐ Theme

New to CDSS alerts? Start here

A Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) checks each prescription against the patient's record and pops up alerts (interactions, allergies, dose or kidney warnings, duplicates). Your job is to decide what each alert really means:

  1. Read the alert and the patient's EHR (allergies, current medicines, labs, conditions).
  2. Grade the severity — Critical (dangerous/contraindicated), Major (important), or Minor (low value).
  3. Take the right action — accept, override (with a reason), adjust the dose, hold & contact the prescriber, or do not dispense.
  4. Never override a Critical alert. But don't over-react to every Minor one either — that causes alert fatigue.

Unsure on a case? Open “Need a hint?” in the console.

Student tasks

Components of a CDSS

ComponentRole
Knowledge baseClinical rules, drug data, interaction & allergy databases
Inference engineApplies the rules to patient data to generate alerts & recommendations
Communication / EHR linkPulls patient data from the EHR and pushes alerts into the prescribing workflow
Alerts & remindersInterruptive and non-interruptive prompts at the point of prescribing/dispensing

Alert severity & correct action

SeverityMeaning & correct action
CriticalContraindicated / life-threatening — never override. Hold & contact prescriber, or do not dispense.
MajorClinically significant — hold & contact prescriber, or adjust the regimen.
MinorLow clinical value — accept & proceed or override with a brief reason (avoid alert fatigue).

Actions: Accept & proceed · Override with documented reason · Adjust dose/regimen · Hold & contact prescriber · Do not dispense (contraindicated).

Faculty assessment rubric

CriteriaMarks

Overriding or accepting a Critical alert is a patient-safety error and fails the station.

Candidate & case assignment

Practical record & assessment

Triage the CDSS alerts and submit to generate your assessment, then write and submit your report.