Developing Portable PGx CDS Algorithms

Clinical pharmacogenomic (PGx) guidelines are often used as the basis for genomic clinical decision support (CDS) rules, the development of which is very labor-intensive. Currently, each adopting site must interpret the guideline content individually because electronic medical record (EMR) systems use proprietary syntaxes for CDS rules. This can result in variations in CDS logic among sites, leading to inconsistencies in patient care and complicating future outcomes studies of PGx-guided therapy. Given the pace at which existing guidelines are updated and the rate of publication of new PGx guidelines, the current process of disseminating PGx knowledge and translating it into clinical practice is not scalable. We are developing methods that utilize emerging standards to enable the generation and dissemination of PGx CDS algorithms that can be shared across EMR systems. This work is done in collaboration with Arizona State University and Health Level Seven International (HL7).