| Clinical practice guidelines are important sources of information for physicians, providing evidence-based recommendations about the optimal investigation and management of specific health conditions. One strategy to improve the implementation of these guidelines is to convert them into a computer-interpretable format so that they can function as a decision support reminder system for physicians. Once guidelines are in a computerized format, it may be possible to use them in ways that were not originally intended, such as acting as the basis for generating tailored patient education materials. This patient directed initiative could further improve guideline implementation and enhance patient care. In this paper I present an approach to doing this using a Canadian guideline for managing dyslipidemia along with the XML-based GEM formalism. I will describe the major tasks required to achieve this, including converting the guideline to GEM, developing the information tailoring system and implementing the functioning system. |
