Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) are a set of "systematically developed recommendations to help professionals and patients make health care decisions more appropriate, select the most appropriate diagnostic or therapeutic options when addressing a health problem or a specific clinical condition”.

Clinical practice guidelines are only as good as the evidence and trials in which they are based so that adherence to recommendations by professionals and patients will depend on their trust in them. The use of quality guidelines has the potential to reduce variability and improve clinical practice.

The AGREE Instrument to assess the quality of guidelines has been a great help to improve and set standards to improve the quality of the guides. In addition, Osteba has developed the CPG free of gender bias instrument specifically designed to study inequality and gender discrimination, and the implications in the generation of biases in health research, and more specifically on the validity and quality of CPGs.

In recent years, Osakidetza and Osteba have maintained work line in developing, adapting, updating and implementing clinical practice guidelines. Futhermore, the creation of GuiaSalud and the implementation of the program in 2006, Elaboration of Clinical Practice Guidelines in the NHS has led the development of CPG by HTA agencies and other institutions in close collaboration with professional scientific societies and including the views of professionals and patients.

At the international level we have collaborated with Guidelines International Network (GIN) since its beginning in 2003. GIN is an international collaborative network to avoid duplication of efforts and support the harmonization, information sharing, knowledge transfer and building capacities in the area of the CPG.

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