1500 guidelines and growing: the UK database of clinical guidelines

The national (UK) database of clinical guidelines, Guidelines Finder, is managed under contract by the University of Sheffield Health Sciences Library. It is one of most visited resources within the National electronic Library of Health (www.nelh.nhs.uk), which reflects that clinical guidelines are a major mechanism to ensure that healthcare decisions and interventions are relevant, safe and evidence based. This comprehensive resource, launched in 2003, now indexes over 1000 guidelines. All guidelines must be published by an authoritative national organisation, be based on a systematic literature search and be available electronically on the internet.

This paper will outline:
• the historical and political dimension of the clinical guideline ‘movement’
• the nature of guidelines as a mechanism to ensure clinical effectiveness in practice
• wh o publ ishes guidelines in the UK and the process they use in preparing guidelines
• how the Guidelines Finder database is maintained, organised and publicised
• the criteria for selection of guidelines
• usage and users of the resource
• lessons from a local library offering a national service.