Build Journal · THC CDSS

What a physician needs to see in the first 30 seconds of a CDSS screen

By Ganesh R Datta. I build healthcare AI end to end: clinical decision support, clinic intake, and the marketing and operations around them.

Clinical software is used in the gaps between patients. If the screen needs a minute to read, it doesn't get read.

The order I design for

1. Who this is, and where they are in their program.
2. What has changed since the last review.
3. What needs a decision now.
4. What is missing or uncertain.

Everything else, full history and raw data, is one click away, not on the first screen.

What I remove

• Decorative charts that look good in a demo and don't change a decision.
• Long AI-generated summaries that bury the one finding that matters.
• Status indicators nobody acts on.

How to test it

Show the screen to a physician for 30 seconds, then hide it. Ask what they would do next. If they can't say, the screen is doing too much.

More from the Build Journal

• What building clinical decision support across streams of medicine taught me
• Decision support, not decision making: where I draw the line in a CDSS
• Mapping AI assessments to the programs patients actually enroll in
• Structuring an integrative assessment around root causes

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