Australia: National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC): Development of ME/CFS guidelines

The NHMRC ME/CFS Clinical Guideline Development Committee recently held its second meeting. This session was a training workshop to help committee members learn about the GRADE approach, a method used to assess the quality of research evidence. NHMRC uses this approach when developing all clinical guidelines. [Summary copied from Emerge Facebook]



The meeting focused on principles of trustworthy guideline development and the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) approach for assessing the certainty of evidence.

Key highlights​

  • Members explored the foundations of trustworthy guideline development, including systematic review processes, assessing the certainty of evidence and the importance of transparent and structured guideline development approaches.
  • Members considered various international standards and tools for development and assessment of trustworthy guidelines, including the AGREE II tool, the GRADE approach and NHMRC Standards for Guidelines.
  • Members noted NHMRC’s role in guideline development, including governance structures and legislated responsibilities.
  • A key focus was the application of GRADE domains to assess the certainty of evidence in systematic reviews. Members also discussed approaches for rating the importance of outcomes to inform guideline recommendations.

Next steps​

The next meeting of the ME/CFS GDC is anticipated for early December 2025 and will focus on topic prioritisation and key focus areas for the evidence evaluations.
The NHMRC's approach to GRADE can be seen here:
 
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