By recovering data in an ordered manner and at the right time, clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) are designed to help healthcare professionals make decisions that improve patient care.
The aim of the present study was to translate the REMEDI[e]s tool's explicit criteria, France's first reference list of potentially inappropriate drugs for the elderly, into seminatural language, in order to implement these criteria as alert rules and then enable their computer coding in a CDSS.
This work was carried out at Lille University Hospital by a team of clinical pharmacists with expertise in the use of pharmaceutical decision support systems, in collaboration with the authors of the REMEDI[e]s tool. A total of 3 multi-professional consensus meetings were required to discuss the construction of each rule in seminatural language and the coding choices.
All REMEDIES criteria (n=104) were translated into seminatural language. This study is the first to have translated the 104 REMEDI[e]s explicit criteria into seminatural language.
One of the study's strengths relates to the close collaboration between the authors of the REMEDI[e]s tool and experts in CDSS programming rules; this ensured the exactitude of the seminatural language translations and limited (mis)interpretations.