Vision of the NIH Collaboratory

The goal of the NIH Collaboratory is to build a national infrastructure to support PCTs, including trials with positive results that can be adopted by any organization, regardless of size. When CDS is part of the intervention, it needs to be presented in a way to be easily adopted to local organizations. Researchers should include plans to share their CDS-based interventions; some options are outlined below.

Why and When to Disseminate

Data and resource sharing is fundamental to the mission of the NIH Collaboratory, and sharing details about CDS tools used in the NIH Collaboratory Trials is consistent with that.  Pragmatic trialists should plan to share details about effective CDS tools in order to disseminate their interventions beyond their organizations. This can be done through many media, including through publications and conferences. In addition to more established academic media, publishing the CDS tool itself can save potential implementers months of work and costs for local adoption, and this should be considered the gold standard of dissemination.

AHRQ has developed CDS Connect as a repository for CDS artifacts that identify and codify new evidence-based standards of care. Another such hosting platform is the SMART (Substitutable Medical Applications, Reusable Technologies) App Gallery, where different apps are hosted for use on the web, via smartphones, or the EHR. OpenCDS is a similar resource, where standards-based open source CDS tools are hosted. Both may require some work on the part of the adopting institution, as FHIR or certain terminology standards may differ from what is done locally, so extra work in mapping may be necessary. EHR vendors also maintain ways of sharing artifacts with and between their customers, and while this in not open source, it provides another mechanism for disseminating CDS tools.