The Guidelines International Network (G-I-N www.g-i-n.net) is a major new international initiative involving guideline-developing organisations from around the world. G-I-N seeks to improve the quality of health care by promoting systematic development of clinical practice guidelines and their application into practice.

The Network now has over 45 international members, most of whom prepare evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, or actively promote the use of evidence in practice. One of the priorities of the organisation is to share evidence tables and adapt guidelines for local circumstances based on international evidence. In the longer term, guideline developers are planning to create ‘living guidelines’ that can be continuously updated and used by a number of different countries.

A major consideration for guideline developers is how to communicate and work with information technology scientists to develop standards and protocols for the translation of these trans-national guidelines into electronic formats. To be effective, there must be formal internationally agreed standards that allow electronic guidelines to be shared and automatically updated.

The Guidelines International Network will be taking a leading international role in working with designers and vendors of electronic decision support systems and tools to guarantee the integrity of guidelines when translated into electronic formats. This presentation by Catherine Marshall, Kitty Rosenbrand and Guenter Ollenschlaeger will:

• explore current experiences from New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands

• identify issues from the perspective of guideline developers

• make recommendations for establishing opportunities for software designers, vendors and informatics experts to collaborate with guideline developers to ensure that up to date evidence can be easily implemented and shared throughout the world.