A new generation of reliable clinical practice guidelines through MAGIC

Abstract

Safe and effective disease diagnosis and treatment requires that health personnel can access the best evidence, preferably through reliable clinical practice guidelines. Most guidelines have methodological weaknesses, suboptimal reporting formats, and frequently fail to update content. New standards developed by the US Institute of Medicine and the Guidelines International Network and Systems for Trustworthy Guidelines offer better opportunities for success in the development of guidelines, but also increase the demand for methodological competence, clinical experience and time. It is important to provide clinical practice guidelines with reliable content, and achieve their dissemination and update as needed. In this article we describe how to apply new standards, methods and tools for the creation, dissemination and updating of reliable clinical practice guidelines. Key steps were set for the elaboration of guidelines by using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system. It will be explained how an innovative research program, Making GRADE the Irresistible Choice (MAGIC) (www.magicproject.org), through its authorship and publication platform (MAGICapp), offers new solutions to facilitate the production, dissemination and dynamic update of reliable clinical practice guidelines. An example will be described about a recently published Norwegian guideline on the new oral anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation, showing how a guideline published in MAGICapp can be used in medical practice.