Developing and applying a 'living guidelines' approach to WHO recommendations on maternal and perinatal health

Abstract

How should the WHO most efficiently keep its global recommendations up to date? In this article we describe how WHO developed and applied a ‘living guidelines’ approach to its maternal and perinatal health (MPH) recommendations, based on a systematic and continuous process of prioritisation and updating. Using this approach, 25 new or updated WHO MPH recommendations have been published in 2017–2018. The new approach helps WHO ensure its guidance is responsive to emerging evidence and remains up to date for end users.

WHO recommendations on antenatal nutrition: an update on multiple micronutrient supplements

“…As part of the WHO’s normative work on supporting evidence-informed policies and practices and its living guidelines approach, 8 on the advice of the Executive Guideline Steering Group, WHO prioritised the updating of the recommendation on MMS on the basis of additional trials published after the release of the 2016 ANC guideline. 9 In addition, an individual participant data meta-analysis was published in 2017, 10 which led to a call for WHO to review the multiple micronutrient recommendation.…”

How to keep up to date with medical information using web‐based resources: a systematised review and narrative synthesis

“…Living evidence services may support the idea of 'living practice guidelines' that are one step closer to reality, with the hope to produce timely, up-to-date and high-quality guidelines for promoting health and quality of life (Akl, Meerpohl, Elliott, Kahale, & Schunemann, 2017). For example, the World Health Organization (WHO) has already developed and applied a 'living guidelines' approach to its maternal and perinatal health (MPH) recommendations (Vogel et al, 2019). Table 2 is an indicative summary table demonstrating which category of the actors of the health care system (clinicians, medical researchers and students) would benefit the most from each of the Web-based resources listed in this review study (note that more than one category could benefit from the same resource).…”

Clinical care of pregnant and postpartum women with COVID‐19: Living recommendations from the National COVID‐19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce

“…17 This approach has been used successfully in stroke, diabetes, maternal health and other topics. [18][19][20] The National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce was established in March 2020 to produce living recommendations on the clinical care of people with COVID-19 in Australia. 21 As of 17…”