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The volume of biomedical knowledge is growing exponentially and much of this knowledge is represented in computer executable formats, such as models, algorithms, and programmatic code. There is a growing need to apply this knowledge to improve health in Learning Health Systems, health delivery organizations, and other settings. However, most organizations do not yet have the infrastructure required to consume and apply computable knowledge, and national policies and standards adoption are not sufficient to ensure that it is discoverable and used safely and fairly, nor is there widespread experience in the process of knowledge implementation as clinical decision support. The Mobilizing Computable Biomedical Knowledge (MCBK) community was formed in 2016 to address these needs. This report summarizes the main outputs of the third annual MCBK public meeting, which was held virtually from June 30 to July 1, 2020 and brought together over 200 participants from various domains to frame and address important dimensions for mobilizing CBK.

The volume of biomedical knowledge is growing exponentially and much of this knowledge is represented in computer executable formats, such as models, algorithms and programmatic code. There is a growing need to apply this knowledge to improve health in Learning Health Systems, health delivery organizations, and other settings. However, most organizations do not yet have the infrastructure required to consume and apply computable knowledge, and national policies and standards adoption are not sufficient to ensure that it is discoverable and used safely and fairly, nor is there widespread experience in the process of knowledge implementation as clinical decision support. The Mobilizing Computable Biomedical Knowledge (MCBK) community formed in 2016 to address these needs. This report summarizes the main outputs of the Second Annual MCBK public meeting, which was held at the National Institutes of Health on July 18-19, 2019 and brought together over 150 participants from various domains to frame and address important dimensions for mobilizing CBK.

Information technology approaches to delivering diagnostic clinical decision support (CDS) are the subject of the papers to follow in the proceedings. These will address the history of CDS and present day approaches (Miller), evaluation of diagnostic CDS methods (Friedman), and the role of clinical documentation in supporting diagnostic decision making (Schiff). In addition, several other considerations relating to this topic are interesting to ponder. We are moving toward increased understanding of gene regulation and gene expression, identification of biomarkers, and the ability to predict patient response to disease and to tailor treatments to these individual variations--referred to as "personalized" or, more recently, "predictive" medicine. Consequently, diagnostic decision making is more and more linked to management decision making, and generic diagnostic labels like "diabetes" or "colon cancer" will no longer be sufficient, because they don't tell us what to do. Ultimately, if we have more complete data including more structured capture of phenomic data as well as the characterization of the patient's genome, direct prediction from responses of highly refined subsets of similar patients in a database can be used to select appropriate management, the effectiveness of which was demonstrated in projects in selected limited domains as early as the 1970s. In general, there are six classes of methodologies, including the above, which can be applied to delivering CDS. In addition, patients are becoming more knowledgeable and should be regarded as active participants, not only in helping to obtain data but also in their own status assessment and as recipients of decision support. With the above advances, this is a very promising time to be engaged in pursuit of methods of CDS.

Trends in health information technology include (1) improved access to patient care information; (2) methods for patient-doctor interaction and decision making; (3) computerized practice guidelines; and (4) the concept of patients being in clinical management states (CMS). Problem-specific environments and CMS-related resources should be the focus of continuing medical education. (SK)

Discusses limitations in the development of health care information systems; explains component methodology for complex software development, including component interface semantics; and describes Arachne, a development environment available via the Internet consisting of a set of tools that enables applications to be constructed through composition of distributed software objects. (Author/LRW)