TY - JOUR
T1 - Living systematic reviews
T2 - 4. Living guideline recommendations
AU - Living Systematic Review Network
AU - Akl, Elie A.
AU - Meerpohl, Joerg J.
AU - Elliott, Julian
AU - Kahale, Lara A.
AU - Schünemann, Holger J.
AU - Agoritsas, Thomas
AU - Hilton, John
AU - Perron, Caroline
AU - Akl, Elie
AU - Hodder, Rebecca
AU - Pestridge, Charlotte
AU - Albrecht, Lauren
AU - Horsley, Tanya
AU - Platt, Joanne
AU - Armstrong, Rebecca
AU - Nguyen, Phi Hung
AU - Plovnick, Robert
AU - Arno, Anneliese
AU - Ivers, Noah
AU - Quinn, Gail
AU - Au, Agnes
AU - Johnston, Renea
AU - Rada, Gabriel
AU - Bagg, Matthew
AU - Jones, Arwel
AU - Ravaud, Philippe
AU - Boden, Catherine
AU - Kahale, Lara
AU - Richter, Bernt
AU - Boisvert, Isabelle
AU - Keshavarz, Homa
AU - Ryan, Rebecca
AU - Brandt, Linn
AU - Kolakowsky-Hayner, Stephanie A.
AU - Salama, Dina
AU - Brazinova, Alexandra
AU - Nagraj, Sumanth Kumbargere
AU - Salanti, Georgia
AU - Buchbinder, Rachelle
AU - Lasserson, Toby
AU - Santaguida, Lina
AU - Champion, Chris
AU - Lawrence, Rebecca
AU - Santesso, Nancy
AU - Chandler, Jackie
AU - Les, Zbigniew
AU - Schünemann, Holger J.
AU - Charidimou, Andreas
AU - Leucht, Stefan
AU - Shemilt, Ian
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank the members of the Living Systematic Reviews network for their comments on the paper, particularly Linn Brandt, Itziar Etxeandia, Kurinchi Gurusamy, Andrew Maas, Laura Martínez García, Stefania Mondello, Zachary Munn, Nicole Skoetz, Anneliese Synnot, Tari Turner, and Luke Wolfenden. We would like to acknowledge Cochrane Canada center and the GRADE center at McMaster University for financially supporting a meeting on the subject in May 2017. The Living Systematic Review Network is supported by funding from Cochrane and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (Partnership Project grant APP1114605).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2017/11/1
Y1 - 2017/11/1
N2 - While it is important for the evidence supporting practice guidelines to be current, that is often not the case. The advent of living systematic reviews has made the concept of “living guidelines” realistic, with the promise to provide timely, up-to-date and high-quality guidance to target users. We define living guidelines as an optimization of the guideline development process to allow updating individual recommendations as soon as new relevant evidence becomes available. A major implication of that definition is that the unit of update is the individual recommendation and not the whole guideline. We then discuss when living guidelines are appropriate, the workflows required to support them, the collaboration between living systematic reviews and living guideline teams, the thresholds for changing recommendations, and potential approaches to publication and dissemination. The success and sustainability of the concept of living guideline will depend on those of its major pillar, the living systematic review. We conclude that guideline developers should both experiment with and research the process of living guidelines.
AB - While it is important for the evidence supporting practice guidelines to be current, that is often not the case. The advent of living systematic reviews has made the concept of “living guidelines” realistic, with the promise to provide timely, up-to-date and high-quality guidance to target users. We define living guidelines as an optimization of the guideline development process to allow updating individual recommendations as soon as new relevant evidence becomes available. A major implication of that definition is that the unit of update is the individual recommendation and not the whole guideline. We then discuss when living guidelines are appropriate, the workflows required to support them, the collaboration between living systematic reviews and living guideline teams, the thresholds for changing recommendations, and potential approaches to publication and dissemination. The success and sustainability of the concept of living guideline will depend on those of its major pillar, the living systematic review. We conclude that guideline developers should both experiment with and research the process of living guidelines.
KW - Living guidelines
KW - Living systematic review
KW - Prioritizing recommendations
KW - Updating guidelines
KW - Updating systematic reviews
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2017.08.009
DO - 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2017.08.009
M3 - Review article
C2 - 28911999
AN - SCOPUS:85028968915
SN - 0895-4356
VL - 91
SP - 47
EP - 53
JO - Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
JF - Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
ER -