DynaMed, a clinical reference that seeks to offer timely updates and a strong evidence-based approach, has reportedly become more well-known among clinicians and other healthcare professionals. Now, guideline developers, adapters, implementers and users are taking notice, according to the company. A recent breast cancer guideline commissioned by Seguro Social, Costa Rica's public health system, is said to have been completed in a much shorter timeframe, with a smaller staff and for less money by using DynaMed plus two existing guidelines as the starting point. DynaMed is a proprietary database of EBSCO Publishing, US.
It is observed that guidelines are typically developed using a lengthy process to identify the current evidence related to any intervention for a particular condition, evaluate the current evidence and summarise the evidence. Development can take 18-24 months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Costa Rican development team was given six months. The guideline was completed in five months, and on budget.
Dr. Mario Tristan is the Chairperson and Director-General of the International Health Central American Institute and the Director of Cochrane Central America and the Spanish Caribbean Branch. He, along with CCSS Medical Advisor Dr. Anggie Ramirez, was tasked with creating the breast cancer guideline in Costa Rica. He says by using DynaMed guideline developers were able to dramatically reduce the time it takes to perform a comprehensive search of the literature and find relevant studies.
The Costa Rican team's use of DynaMed was presented at the recent Guidelines International Network Conference (G-I-N) piquing the interest of many guideline developers wanting to know more about the methodology used in Costa Rica and evaluating how DynaMed can be used for guideline development support.
According to DynaMed representatives, the benefits do not stop with guideline creation since the tool is also able to disseminate the guidelines to clinicians and provide alerts to guideline developers when new evidence is introduced — evidence that may impact existing guidelines.
