Blogger's Note: this is not specific to ovarian cancer but to guideline development in general (all on the same page, so to speak) hoping that patient care is reflected in a global environment for best care; would be helpful information for patient advocates
Guidelines International Network: Toward International Standards forClinical Practice Guidelines
Guideline development processes vary substantially, and many
guidelines do not meet basic quality criteria. Standards for guideline
development can help organizations ensure that recommendations are
evidence-based and can help users identify high-quality guidelines. Such
organizations as the U.S. Institute of Medicine and the United
Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence have
developed recommendations to define trustworthy guidelines within their
locales. Many groups charged with guideline development find the lengthy
list of standards developed by such organizations to be aspirational
but infeasible to follow in entirety.
Founded in 2002, the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N) is a
network of guideline developers that includes 93 organizations and 89
individual members representing 46 countries. The G-I-N board of
trustees recognized the importance of guideline development processes
that are both rigorous and feasible even for modestly funded groups to
implement and initiated an effort toward consensus about minimum
standards for high-quality guidelines. In contrast to other existing
standards for guideline development at national or local levels, the key
components proposed by G-I-N will represent the consensus of an
international, multidisciplinary group of active guideline developers.
This article presents G-I-N's
proposed set of key components for
guideline development. These key components address panel composition,
decision-making process, conflicts of interest, guideline objective,
development methods, evidence review, basis of recommendations, ratings
of evidence and recommendations, guideline review, updating processes,
and funding. It is hoped that this article promotes discussion and
eventual agreement on a set of international standards for guideline
development.
