Improving the use of research evidence in guideline development: 13. Applicability, transferability and adaptation

Schünemann, Holger J; Fretheim, Atle; Oxman, Andrew D

Given WHO's mandate; limited resources that are available to develop high quality guidelines that are informed by the best available evidence, particularly in LMIC; and the potential to reduce unnecessary duplication, WHO should continue to develop international guidelines. However, these guidelines will often require adaptation and tailoring to local contexts and WHO should, so far as possible, provide support to help ensure that international guidelines are adapted appropriately to local circumstances. To do this WHO must ensure that it systematically considers needs for local adaptation when developing guidelines; and that it has sufficient capacity to support both developing and supporting the adaptation of high priority guidelines. To do this as effectively and efficiently as possible WHO should collaborate with other organizations both in developing guidelines and, importantly, in developing capacity in LMIC and supporting appropriate adaptation in countries that lack resources. We provide other recommendations about how WHO can improve the implementation of organizational changes to guideline development in other articles in this series [6, [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] .