Fig. 5

Forest plot of the overall effect of CDSS for prescribing on physician practice performance and patient outcome based on medication subgroup analysis after sensitivity analysis. After sensitivity analysis, heterogeneity improved considerably, excluding khonsari et al. [33]; Ackerman et al. [49]; Avansino et al. [51], and Bruxvoort et al. [59]. The pooled std diff in means of p values was used for evaluating the overall and subgroup effects of CDSS which were significantly different (std diff in means = 0.084, 95% CI 0.067–0.102) as a whole. Meta-analysis results for each subgroup of medication scope showed a significant difference between CDSS and control groups for medication scopes namely as hypertension (CI 0.102–0.272); increasing blood potassium (CI 0.006–0.066); multiple medications (CI 0.084–0.332); AIDs (CI 0.038–0.444); kidney disorders (CI 0.073–0.193); diabetes (CI 0.223–0.539); cardiac (CI 0.035–0.111); mental disease (CI 0.010–0.114); medication prescription (CI 0.094–0.219); and pulmonary disease (CI 0.014–0.144)