Toor and Chana present a cogent overview of emerging trends in information technology in the broader healthcare sector, distilled from 108 papers that were analyzed and ultimately classified into four broad categories according to the technologies used. Given the staggering number of patients who die yearly due to medical errors (reported by the authors as 98,000 in 1995), the incredible costs of fixing these errors (reported as $29 billion), and the fact that three of out four errors could have been eliminated if better information systems would have been used to make required information readily available, the importance of accurate and reliable IT systems in the healthcare sector cannot be overstated.

The introduction provides an overview of the history of electronic health record systems (EHRs), but unfortunately glosses over the many technical issues related to integration and standards, not to mention cost, that invariably slows the adoption of EHRs, especially within smaller healthcare centers. Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are referenced, particularly as they arise out of the implementation of EHRs. It should be noted that the review by Toor and Chana aims at summarizing the numerous fields of IT providing medical solutions and thus leans more toward an exposé of CDSS style solutions.

The research questions and motivations of the authors are covered in sufficient detail, as are their search methodologies. The results provide interesting insight into the emerging trends in healthcare information technology research as they relate to decision support systems for a period covering 2002 to 2015. Toor and Chana classify medical data into four broad categories (genomic, proteomic, drugs, and clinical data), which are leveraged via the use of four technologies (network analysis, data mining, text mining, and cloud-based services). The information is high level, and the resulting sections limit their discourses to summary-level information. Of particular value is a set of tables that provide cross-references between the tools and techniques and the papers the authors reviewed.

Overall, this paper provides a decent introduction to a number of important emerging trends in medical data-focused information technology. The paper provides a good entry point for researchers interested in pursuing and implementing clinical decision support systems in the healthcare IT field.