Table 2 Innovative strategies and resources available to guidance developers
Stage of the guidance | Innovative approaches used in the OptimizeMNH guidance | Areas of use | Resources available to guideline organisations interested in using similar approaches |
|---|---|---|---|
Gathering the evidence | Systematic reviews of qualitative research (also referred to as qualitative evidence syntheses) | Can be used to: - Gather evidence about stakeholders’ views and preferences, for instance, on which outcomes that stakeholders value the most in relation to the guidance question/s - Gather evidence about the acceptability and feasibility of interventions - Offer information about implementation considerations | - WHO Handbook for guideline development, chapter 15 on using evidence from qualitative research to develop WHO guidelines: http://www.who.int/kms/guidelines_review_committee/en/ - Developing NICE guidelines: the manual: https://www.nice.org.uk/article/pmg20/chapter/1-Introduction-and-overview - Website of the Cochrane Qualitative and Implementation Methods Group, which includes guidance on conducting qualitative evidence syntheses: http://methods.cochrane.org/qi/supplemental-handbook-guidance - Texts on conducting qualitative evidence syntheses: [33, 35] |
Multi-country case study syntheses | Can be used to gather evidence about the issues mentioned above and may be particularly useful where reviews of qualitative research do not cover sufficiently macro-level issues | ||
Assessing and synthesising the evidence | GRADE-CERQual (“Confidence in Evidence from Reviews of Qualitative Research”) approach | Used to transparently assess and describe how much confidence to place in findings from qualitative evidence syntheses | - Website with information about the GRADE-CERQual approach: www.cerqual.org - Text describing the GRADE-CERQual approach: [26] |
Developing the recommendations | DECIDE evidence-to-decision framework | A structured health system framework to help guidance panel members move from evidence to recommendations. For each guidance question, the framework presented, in a structured format, a summary of the evidence regarding: • The benefits and harms of the intervention • Anticipated resource use • Acceptability of the intervention, i.e. the extent to which that intervention is considered to be reasonable among those receiving, delivering or affected by the intervention • Feasibility of the intervention, i.e. the likelihood that the intervention can be properly carried out or implemented in a given context | - Website: https://ietd.epistemonikos.org/#/login |