The American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) seeks an AHRQ R18 grant to partially fund the development, implementation, and evaluation of the ACCP Interactive Evidence-based Point-of-care Center, a unique system designed to provide clinicians and patients with updated ACCP guideline recommendations in a timely and user-friendly manner. The Center will consist of an online and mobile-optimized Center of current, frequently updated ACCP guideline recommendations, in easily accessible formats, available at the point-of- care. These goals will be accomplished by tagging the evidence-based recommendations to produce the most relevant information in response to PICO-based queries and will use federated searching to reduce search time. This will ensure that the user will only receive the most current information, as well as electronic alerts and flags associated with related content and recommendations to inform interested users about important and relevant news (eg, FDA alerts). The Center will provide a single entry point for clinicians and patients to all ACCP clinical resources and opportunities related to their topic of interest and will invisibly link information on topics that might be covered in multiple guidelines (eg, persistent cough recommendations in guidelines for PAH, cough, and lung cancer). The ACCP intends to utilize social media to disseminate information regarding content updates, relevant news, as well as interesting bits of evidence-based information to spark further discussions in the social media and to drive audiences to the Center. In addition, the ACCP anticipates developing interactive versions of decision-support algorithms as well as mobile-App versions of the Center. The development and dissemination of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines are among the most important projects of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP). With our guideline publications and tools, we reach an audience of hundreds of thousands of physicians and impact the care of millions of patients worldwide. Guideline recommendations serve as the foundation of medical education curricula within the ACCP and medical community at large. Performance measures, registries, and electronic medical records are developed from evidence-based recommendations. In addition, health-care policies have been modified as a result of ACCP guideline recommendations. Despite the value to both ACCP members and nonmembers, finding clinically relevant, up to date information for specific patient populations quickly and on demand has been challenging. In response to these issues, the ACCP recently developed a Living Guidelines Model mandating the frequent updating of guidelines and the dissemination of the most current guideline recommendations to clinicians and patients in a timely, user-friendly manner, which is accessible at the point of care. The ACCP anticipates that by providing easy and timely access, the Center will improve the usability and adherence to guidelines, thus leading to improved quality of healthcare provided to patients with the AHRQ priority conditions of cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, including lung cancer.
The development and dissemination of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, a primary function of the ACCP, is of paramount importance to improving healthcare for all populations inasmuch as they are multidisciplinary and utilized by the healthcare community to develop performance measures, registries, data- collection instruments, electronic medical records, medical educational programs, and health-care policies. Despite the availability of guidelines via journal print and online publications, the adherence to guidelines by clinicians remains problematic with one of the often cited primary obstacles to adherence being that finding current, clinically relevant information for specific patients quickly and on demand is challenging. The ACCP anticipates that by providing frequent updating of guidelines with easy and timely access at the point-of-care, the ACCP Interactive Evidence-Based Point-of-Care Center will improve the usability and adherence to guidelines, thus leading to improved quality of healthcare provided to patients with the AHRQ priority conditions of cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases, including lung cancer.
