International journal of medical informatics
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Randomized Controlled Trial
An asthma management system in a pediatric emergency department.
Pediatric asthma exacerbations account for >1.8 million emergency department (ED) visits annually. Asthma guidelines are intended to guide time-dependent treatment decisions that improve clinical outcomes; however, guideline adherence is inadequate. We examined whether an automatic disease detection system increases clinicians' use of paper-based guidelines and decreases time to a disposition decision. ⋯ Despite a high level of support from the ED leadership and staff, a focused education effort, and implementation of an automated disease detection, the use of the paper-based asthma protocol remained low and time to patient disposition did not change.