[Current approaches for the implementation of guidelines by means of information technologies]

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) play an increasingly important role in the harmonisation process of health care delivery and disease management. It is known that nationally or internationally produced guidelines that have no consistent implementation strategy, have limited impact in changing physicians' behaviour and patterns of care. The literature provides evidence for the effectiveness of computerisation of CPGs for increasing compliance and improving patient outcomes. The integration of knowledge-based functions for decision support or monitoring in clinical information systems is one effective way. Another approach relies on the original, mostly text-based, guidelines. By structuring these resources with the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) we are able to improve the availability of clinically relevant knowledge at the point of care. XML allows for in-context searching and the customized presentation of guideline content. We are confident that this new approach will improve the acceptance and the benefits of the increasing number of guidelines in medicine.