BMJ  2008;336:236 (2 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39475.341296.DB

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US Institute of Medicine recommends new body to assess what works in health care

Janice Hopkins Tanne

1 New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The Institute of Medicine, part of the US National Academy of Sciences, recommended last week that the country needs an independent programme to evaluate "which diagnostic, treatment, and prevention services work best for various patients and circumstances."

The institute’s report proposes a single entity to provide "credible, unbiased information." It would be overseen by an advisory board "constituted to minimize bias," and its scope seems to be similar to that of the United Kingdom’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

"Under the status quo, the quality of systematic reviews is variable and findings are often unreliable even when published in peer-reviewed scientific journals," the report says.

Hundreds, even thousands, of competing guidelines exist, and there is uncertainty about which are reliable and objective. Guidelines that are paid for by manufacturers or vendors, as many are, are more likely to show effectiveness.

"Unfortunately, the current processes underlying guideline development . . . [Full text of this article]


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