[The Cologne Guidelines Conference: computer-assisted clinical practice guidelines in clinical diagnosis]

Eighteen clinical practice guidelines on interdisciplinary diagnostic issues were developed at the University Hospital of Cologne, Germany. The guideline committee is organized and directed by the quality control program, which also includes the local Cochrane initiative and a wide range of organizational topics. During guideline development, questions of differential diagnosis were addressed to the same extent as the organizational and financial realization. Broad consideration was given to medicolegal implications, but need for interspecialty cooperation was judged to be more critical and even more relevant in this regard. Guidelines were primarily developed as algorithms and translated to text versions secondarily. Critical steps in the decision tree were supported by rated literature and recommendations weighte by criteria as used in evidence-based medicine. For implementation, guidelines were presented to colleagues in a series of short lectures, as print versions containing all literature used in the developing process, and in hypertext format, which is accessible via intranet. Three levels of presentation were chosen in the html-version: algorithm, decision, and information. The former is due to orientation in the guideline, the second displays the binary question, and the latter makes the scientific background available, together with literature and links for more information. Efforts to check effectiveness are currently been made, questions of efficiency will be addressed in future.