Strategy for the provision of information needed in the development of Guidelines for a health reform - a coordinated interdisciplinary experience at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

The Chilean ministry of Health (MINSAL) is implementing a health reform intended to guarantee the resolution of a group of conditions, , timely, at low cost, and with adequate standards of quality.
In order to compile relevant and validated information for the ulterior development of clinical practice guidelines, the MINSAL asked independent institutions to accomplish this task.
In this paper we describe the strategy and procedure developed by the evidence based medicine unit (UMBE) and the biomedical library staff of our institution in order to achieve this task within a very restricted amount of time. A comprehensive common search strategy was developed to retrieve high quality systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials. The latter were searched only if no systematic reviews were available. The search was executed by librarians trained in evidence based medicine and a clinical expert to assist in medical issues. A validation and extraction group composed of at least one content expert, an evidence based medicine expert and a variable amount of contributors (medical students or residents) with basic EBM skills, was established to validate and summarize the information. Our institution applicated for five diseases or conditions. The five validation and extraction groups developed a list of relevant questions based on expert opinion and available clinical practice guidelines, for which a list of relevant web sites in each area were searched separately. These questions were structured according to the evidence based medicine postulates in 4 part question, and were the base for the development of the search strategy. The project was adequately completed in the time required by the solicitant. This strategy was effective to manage a high amount of information with time constrained