gms | German Medical Science

Background: Cancer Council Australia has been looking into new ways of doing guideline to address the problems and challenges in clinical practice guideline development. Cancer Council Australia has developed a methodology and web-based platform to support 'living, up-to-date guidelines'. The model for living guidelines represents the key steps and is aimed to help understand the concept of living guidelines.

Context:Cancer Council Australia, Australia's peak national non-government cancer control organisation, has been developing clinical practice cancer care guidelines for over 16 years.

Description: The model for living guidelines visualises the key steps of this methodology as well as key features of the integrated technological solution, that Cancer Council Australia has developed to support guideline development, publishing and updating.

Key steps are:

1.

Establishing guideline objectives & scope

2.

Developing key clinical questions

3.

Developing search strategy

4.

Searching and recording the literature

5.

Critically appraise and extract key data of the literature

6.

Assessing the body of evidence

7.

Developing content, including evidence-based recommendations and/or practice points

8.

Stakeholder consultation

9.

Guideline dissemination

10.

Guideline implementation

11.

Ongoing literature and content updates and consultation.

Lessons: Importance of a clear description of methodology and processes. Willingness to try, learn, fail and iterate. Effective use of new technologies is essential to improve guideline development.