University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC), as one of the implementing and supporting units of the GUIDANCE, will establish a GUIDANCE Liaison Office to provide full support regarding aspects such as methodology, evidence-based guideline development, and integrated project management.
The GUIDANCE will be a multidisciplinary, not-for-profit organisation. It has already built up several professional committees, based on the types of diseases and clinic practice, with supervisions from academicians and leading clinic researchers in China. Currently, there are eight committees, including infection, inspect, hematology, ICU, respiratory, pharmacy, liver cancer, neurosurgery and pediatrics. The multidisciplinary research team will work together to guarantee the development and implementation of high-quality clinic practice guidelines (CPGs).
Professor Nick Miles, UNNC Provost, gave a speech at the launching ceremony. He said that in today’s world, people need effective and efficient health care more than ever. For years, UNNC has been committed to interdisciplinary research and practice in health. “Specifically, we host a GRADE centre at UNNC. The Nottingham Ningbo GRADE Centre is the 10th centre established in the world and the second in China. Since its inception in 2018, the Centre has led the development of 8 national clinical practice guidelines, and one international rapid guideline in areas of breast cancer screening/diagnosis, bacterial infection, leukaemia, Heliobacter pylori.”
"I am pleased to see UNNC to accelerate the production of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, so that clinicians can adopt the best possible standardised procedures and medicines to treat patients," said Professor Nick Miles.
At the meeting afterwards, the GUIDANCE made a future working plan, including to develop all-disease CPGs applicable in China, provide comprehensive project management, methodological and funding support to CPG developers across clinical specialties in China, cultivate talent to support technology innovation in evidenced-based medicine, promote the advanced diagnosis and treatment experience of China and enhance the international status of China's clinical research.
Over the past two decades, methods of developing CPG have improved and developed in to a more reliable scientific process. The University of Nottingham is among the top universities worldwide in summarising CPGs based on routine clinical data collected.
The Nottingham China Health Institute was established in 2018, and the Ningbo GRADE Centre was also approved to develop CPGs for China since early 2018. For the past three years, the Centre has been working on combining regional practices to distil the optimal clinical evidence into CPGs to provide guidance for safe and efficient diagnosis and treatment.
In the future, one of the permanent offices of the Alliance will be at UNNC, directed by Jun Xia, Director of the Systems Evaluation and Clinical Guidelines Branch of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at University of Nottingham. The office will provide methodological support for the Alliance as well as associated operational management.