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Enhancing clinical practice guidelines with STAR
  1. Nan Yang1,2,
  2. Hui Liu1,2,
  3. Janne Estill2,3,
  4. Yaolong Chen1,2,4
  1. 1Research Unit of Evidence-Based Evaluation and Guidelines, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (2021RU017), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
  2. 2Evidence-Based Medicine Center, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
  3. 3Institute of Global Health, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  4. 4WHO Collaborating Centre for Guideline Implementation and Knowledge Translation, Lanzhou, Gansu, China
  1. Correspondence to Professor Yaolong Chen; chevidence{at}lzu.edu.cn

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Clinical practice guidelines, commonly referred to as ‘guidelines’, play an important role in guiding physicians in their clinical practice by bridging the gap between research evidence and healthcare decisions.1 However, the current guidelines face challenges such as varying quality levels, poor clinical applicability and difficulties in implementation.2 3 To solve the these problems, the WHO collaborating centre for guideline implementation and knowledge translation established the Scientific, Transparent and Applicable Rankings (STAR) working group in 2021.4 This group developed a comprehensive and efficient evaluation tool to assist healthcare professionals in developing and using more reliable guidelines.4

Introduction of STAR

The STAR tool encompasses 11 domains and 39 items, which have been designed to evaluate guidelines comprehensively. The tool performed well in terms of reliability, validity and efficiency by rigorous testing.4 Compared with previous evaluation tools, STAR has several advantages:

  1. The STAR working group encompasses 34 experts from various fields, including guideline methodology, clinical medicine, epidemiology and statistics.

  2. The evaluation dimensions of STAR could be reorganised into three categories: scientific, transparent and applicable, but the previous evaluation tools mainly addressed one of these dimensions, such as ‘Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II (AGREE-II)’ tool for scientific dimension, ‘Reporting Items for Practice Guidelines in Healthcare’ for transparent dimension and ‘Guideline Implement-ability Appraisal tool’ for applicable dimension . Both STAR and the AGREE Recommendation EXcellence (AGREE-REX) tool …

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Footnotes

  • NY and HL contributed equally.

  • Contributors NY and HL: conceived the study, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript. JE and YC revised the manuscript.

  • Funding This work was supported by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences-Research Unit of Evidence-Based Evaluation and Guidelines (2021RU017).

  • Competing interests All the authors are members of the STAR (Scientific, Transparent and Applicable Rankings) working group.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.