The Decision Support System

Something new, that I learn this past week. The DSS, is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from raw data, documents, personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions. But this is just the organization of a mass information to help us make a better decision, we have to gather all the other detail data that a computer can't analyze, remember sometimes there is people behind the numbers.

A perfect example to this is the DSS call "Isabel, is designed to help the doctors consider all the likely diagnoses and to make the latest medical information readily available at the point of care. The first step in developing the Isabel decision support system was to create taxonomy of more than 10,000 diseases and 4,000 drugs. Content for the system is stored on a server and consists of the latest medical textbooks, journals and other articles. When the healthcare professional enters the clinical features of the patient, Isabel instantly provides the user with a checklist of likely diagnoses, and with diagnosis-specific knowledge from medical textbooks and journals on tests to be performed, treatment options, lessons learned and recent advances. It is of great value in presenting likely options, so that physicians are able to consider all the possibilities before coming to a conclusion". (Decision support systems prove vital to healthcare By Judith Lamont, Ph.D., KMWorld Magazine).

So we can see that we have to take all the information into consideration before making a decision, especially when it comes to human beings. We have to know the facts, details, evidence, and especial needs to each situation. The DSS help us with the information and even may suggest some solutions to the problems but the responsibility to make a good final decision and implemented, rest in our shoulders.