Prodigy  

Prodigy is a UK national initiative to develop a computerised clinical decision support system for UK general practice. The project is funded by the NHS Executive and is based at the Sowerby Centre for Health Informatics at Newcastle , a Newcastle University research centre, located within the Primary Care Development Centre at Newcastle General Hospital in the North East of England.

Information technology has a crucial role to play in supporting physicians, as they face the challenges presented by an explosion in the amount of medical knowledge and an increasingly informed society. Although UK primary health care is highly computerised by international standards, PRODIGY is the first significant project to use information technology to offer decision support to general practitioners in the UK.

PRODIGY’s features include advice on pharmaceutical prescribing and guidance on a range of non-drug treatments. The system can be used by GPs to aid decision making, and recommendations can be used, disregarded or adjusted to suit a patient’s needs or local/practice prescribing policies.

Clinical guidance contained in PRODIGY is kept up to date and relevant by an ongoing programme of review and evaluation. Guidance contained in the current release is validated by professionals who are nominated by a number of professional bodies