The GUIDES project group included experts with a strong commitment to evidence-based medicine and broad expertise related to the development, implementation and evaluation of CDS and to the clinical care of patients with knee osteoarthritis.
We developed the GUIDES tools through an iterative process that involved a systematic review of evidence and frameworks, a synthesis of the success factors identified in the review into a comprehensive checklist, feedback from an international expert panel that evaluated the checklist in relation to a list of desirable framework attributes, consultations with patients and healthcare consumers and pilot testing of the checklist. The final GUIDES checklist is publicly available in multiple formats at www.guidesproject.org. CDS developers, implementers, researchers, funders, clinicians, managers, educators, and policymakers across Europe can use the checklist.
As part of the pilot, we used the GUIDES tools to tailor a guideline-based CDS intervention that facilitates the conservative management of knee osteoarthritis. Experts with backgrounds in clinical medicine, research, implementation and/or health informatics suggested the most important recommendations for implementation, how to develop an implementation strategy, and how to conceptualise a CDS intervention. In focus group sessions, general practitioners and patients from Norway, Belgium and Finland, discussed the suggested CDS intervention and identified factors that would be most critical for the success of the intervention. Within the GUIDES project group, we then developed a protocol for a multi-country cluster randomised trial in which we can evaluate the effect off the tailored CDS intervention. The tailored CDS content for osteoarthritis is the intellectual property of the consortium, but will be available to all licensed users of Duodecim and MAGICorg who were consortium partners in this project.
