Abstract
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Objectives: There is a major gap between the best practices suggested by the international health organizations and the daily medical practice. Inappropriated exam requests expose patients to unnecessary risks and increase the cost of the healthcare system. In order to reduce this gap was developed at Fluminense Federal University a multiplatform mobile app for the 2009 Appropriate Use Criteria for Cardiac Radionuclide Imaging protocol. By looking only at the final scenarios, physicians may not follow the appropriated path on the hierarchy of protocol’s decision tree and so, many exam requests may be asked when shouldn’t or be missed. But to follow most of the main protocols of best practices is a hard job, because besides the fact that physicians would have to read pages of protocols on every appointment, each protocol has its own scores and vocabularies, that turns it an almost impossible task to apply on daily practice. Thinking on that, the app translates the protocols decision tree in a understandable and easy interface with short questions and answers that physicians select to specify the patient’s most likely scenario. The risk scores used by the protocol are also available in the app, as well as the terms, removing the need to leave the app or consulting other technologies. The app is a more viable and useful way for physicians to follow the best practices and increase the exam request accuracy. It was also developed so that others protocols can be added using the same interface, saving more time and effort. The app was tested on the Federal Fluminense University on the Nuclear Medicine sector by a retrospective analisys of 200 patient exam requests. The analisys showed that 5,5% (11) of the exams were considered inappropriated. Although it is still not applied to the daily practice, it proves that it can be used to help physicians following best practices without adding extra an burden to theirs routine.
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