ECRI Institute announced that it will host the medical guidelines that Health and Human Services shut down on July 17. 

HHS closing the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality site meant losing a centralized source of trustworthy, evidence-based information on clinical practice guidelines spanning 20 years of accumulated medical knowledge. 

Now, the nonprofit ECRI will provide a centralized repository of current, vetted evidence-based clinical practice guideline summaries and other information, said  Karen Schoelles, MD, director of the ECRI Institute-Penn Medicine Evidence-based Practice Center and director of Health Technology Assessment Consulting Services.

An interim website will launch this fall to enable users to search and retrieve ECRI’s summaries of clinical practice guidelines from hundreds of participating guideline developers, It will include evaluations on the rigor and transparency of guidelines against the National Academy of Medicine standards for trustworthiness.

The second phase of the work will feature advanced search capabilities, support for guideline implementation and decision-making, and an enhanced user interface. Participating guideline developers will be able to access and contribute to the website.

“Not all guidelines are created equal. Clinicians want to know what stands behind a particular recommendation, and whether they can trust that recommendation,” Jane Jue, MD, medical director of ECRI said in a statement. “Trustworthy guidance is the real value that we will be providing.”

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