Guidelines International Network: Toward International Standards for Clinical 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)…