UEG framework for the development of high-quality clinical guidelines

The 48 national member societies and 17 specialist member societies which operate under the umbrella of United European Gastroenterology (UEG) increasingly develop clinical practice guidelines for both national and international implementation. The methodologies and strategies used in these guidelines vary considerably. The UEG Quality of Care Taskforce aimed to provide a framework for quality guidelines in order to assist member societies in the process of developing guidelines, and to provide a tool for readers of guidelines to critically appraise their quality. We outline the steps necessary to begin the guideline development process, how to build working groups, how to search for evidence, how to grade the quality of the evidence, how to reach consensus on statements and how to write the guideline document. We believe that using this framework will increase the potential to produce a high-quality guideline which is transparent, independent, reproducible and implementable.