DeGeL: a clinical-guidelines library and automated guideline-support tools

Using machine-interpretable clinical guidelines to support evidence-based medicine promotes the quality of medical care. In this chapter, we present the Digital Electronic Guidelines Library (DeGeL), a comprehensive framework, including a Web-based guideline repository and a suite of tools, to support the use of automated guidelines for medical care, research, and quality assessment. Recently, we have developed a new version (DeGeL.NET) of the digital library and of its different tools. We intend to focus in our exposition on DeGeL's major tools, in particular for guideline specification in a Web-based and stand alone fashion (Uruz and Gesher), tools for search and retrieval (Vaidurya and DeGeLookFor) and for run time application (Spock); and to explain how these tools are combined within the typical lifecycle of a clinical guideline.