Cardiology guidelines at point of care

Many Cardiology guidelines have been widely distributed by the professional societies (European Society of Cardiology, American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and the national Cardiology societies). In order to improve accessibility to problem-specific content from guidelines, we have developed a set of tools, methodologies and deployment strategies that provide quick and intuitive access to the clinically relevant section of European practice guidelines at appropriate moments of care delivery. We have developed two guideline delivery systems, one as a stand-alone interactive system and one integrated into a patient information system. Both a PDA version and a PC web based version of the stand-alone system have been developed to support the cardiologist in the medical decision process. The usability of the systems have been tested by staff members of the Cardiology departments in Rotterdam and Cork (Ireland) in a very structured way. The users had an overall positive impression of the systems. Moreover they considered the systems as very useful.