Toward a Preliminary Layered Network Model Representation of Medical Coding in Clinical Decision Support Systems

The aim of this research is to describe the impact of Medical Codes (MC) on building a successful Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) that helps in structuring a beneficial Information Model, we highlight a preliminary Architectural Layered network model to assist health care givers and researchers in representing their work in a unified manner. Via a descriptive methodology, we incorporate the relationship between (MC) and (CDSS), we discussed a brief state of art of (CDSS) as well as medical coding as a process of converting descriptions of medical diagnoses and procedures into universal medical codes and numbers. Integrated with CDSS, medical codes are illustrated as an advanced search engine in the framework of Health Information System (HIS). We revealed the factual influence of health electronic information and proved the necessity of computerizing health care practices through the harmonization between the two categories of medical coding, medical classification (statistics) and nomenclatures (terminologies), and clinical decision support systems. The originality of our study is engaging medical coding and clinical decision support under cohesive scope, which was lacking for investigation. We relied on a plain case study to corroborate the ability of merging different types of medical coding in transforming health information from unstructured to richly structured data, to be used in building the medical knowledge base of the CDSS.