Combating information chaos: a case for collaborative clinical guidelines in a pandemic

C Lee Cohen; Katherine H Walker; Mina Hsiang; Paul D Sonenthal; Elisabeth D Riviello; Shada A Rouhani; Michael S Lipnick; Louis T Merriam; Edy Y Kim

doi:10.1016/j.xcrm.2021.100375

Combating information chaos: a case for collaborative clinical guidelines in a pandemic

Cell Rep Med. 2021 Aug 17;2(8):100375. doi: 10.1016/j.xcrm.2021.100375. Epub 2021 Jul 27.

Authors

C Lee Cohen^{1

2}, Katherine H Walker^{1

2}, Mina Hsiang¹, Paul D Sonenthal^{1

2

3}, Elisabeth D Riviello^{2

4}, Shada A Rouhani^{2

3

5}, Michael S Lipnick⁶, Louis T Merriam¹, Edy Y Kim^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
² Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
³ Partners In Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁴ Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁵ Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁶ Center for Health Equity in Surgery and Anesthesia, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA.

Abstract

The speed and scale of new information during the COVID-19 pandemic required a new approach toward developing best practices and evidence-based clinical guidance. To address this need, we produced COVIDProtocols.org, a collaborative, evidence-based, digital platform for the development and dissemination of COVID-19 clinical guidelines that has been used by over 500,000 people from 196 countries. We use a Collaborative Writing Application (CWA) to facilitate an expedited expert review process and a web platform that deploys content directly from the CWA to minimize any delays. Over 200 contributors have volunteered to create open creative-commons content that spans over 30 specialties and medical disciplines. Multiple local and national governments, hospitals, and clinics have used the site as a key resource for their own clinical guideline development. COVIDprotocols.org represents a model for efficiently launching open-access clinical guidelines during crisis situations to share expertise and combat misinformation.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04389671.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19 / therapy*
COVID-19 / transmission
Evidence-Based Practice / methods*
Humans
Information Dissemination / methods*
Pandemics / prevention & control
Practice Guidelines as Topic* / standards
SARS-CoV-2 / pathogenicity

Associated data

ClinicalTrials.gov/NCT04389671