On 12-13 July 2022, our GRADEpro team attended the GRADE Working Group meeting held at the Conference Center of the Faculty of Medicine in Kraków, Poland. The meeting was organized by GRADE Centre Kraków with Małgorzata Bała (Representative of the Dean of Faculty of Medicine at Jagiellonian University Medical College) and colleagues.
It was a great pleasure to meet everyone who could attend in person and get face-to-face updates on the latest developments, achievements, and plans of the GRADE Working Group.
The meeting consisted of several exciting presentations and small working group sessions. To start the first day, Romina Brignardello-Petersen presented updates on GRADE for network meta-analysis about addressing intransitivity (GRADE NMA group). As GRADEpro GDT had supported the project in the initial parts of its creation, it was especially inspiring to learn about its development and the next steps in the process.
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Following Romina’s opening presentation, Emily Senerth presented her group's work on GRADE Evidence to Decision (EtD) Framework for Environmental and Occupational Health (EOH). The idea of adapting the framework to become more accessible and to match the needs of the EOH field can not only help promote GRADE in more organizations but also provide more insight regarding the existing template of the EtD. Small group sessions were held for participants to discuss the subject further.
After a short break, Jessica Beltran presented the project conducted with Pablo Alonso, Thomas Piggott, and Holger Schünemann on GRADE for Multiple-Intervention Comparisons in Evidence to Decision Frameworks. GRADEpro GDT supports the multi-intervention approach with an existing module, and more functionalities are being developed. While it is still in the conceptual phase, we engaged in a lively discussion on the topic.
After the main presentations, we split into small groups, and each of us attended different sessions. The small group sessions focused on various themes. For example, Wojtek Wiercioch and Gian Paolo Morgano hosted a session on the use of decision thresholds in GRADE EtD Frameworks. This session was of particular interest to us as we are currently working on a solution/functionality to automatically enable the application of the thresholds in EtDs in GRADEpro.
The other presentations also covered equally fascinating subjects. These were:
- GRADE for Prognostic Models,
- GRADE for Intermediate Levels of Certainty of Evidence,
- GRADE Equity Project,
- GRADE Guidance for Assessing Risk of Bias Patient’s Values and Preferences,
- Assessing the Certainty of Evidence at Minimal Baseline Risk,
- GRADE Guidance on the Linkage Between Guidelines and Essential Medicine Applications, and
- GRADE Stakeholder Involvement.
The second day of the meeting began with presentations by Marius Goldkuhle on GRADE in situations where comparator participants receive the intervention treatment, i.e.treatment switching (GRADE for time to event outcomes). Next, Reem Mustafa presented GRADE Diagnosis: Assessing Imprecision and Gordon Guyatt spoke about the GRADE updated Guidance on Inconsistency. All presentations were highly informative and followed by thought-provoking discussion sessions.
Once again, there were small group meetings covering various topics, such as GRADE Guidance on Good Practice Statements, GRADE for Public Health, and GRADE for Quality Assurance and Improvement (assisted by our team in the contextual phase). Finally, Tamara Lotfi and Miloslav Klugar presented their project on GRADE Adaptation/Adolopment - “COVID Recommendations and Gateway to Contextualization.”
The eCOVID Living Recommendation Maps and related projects, including Plain Language Recommendations, are supported by GRADEpro Team. To view the effects of this work, you can visit:: https://covid19.recmap.org/.
Here you can read more about the project: Getting trustworthy guidelines into the hands of decision-makers and supporting their consideration of contextual factors for implementation globally: recommendation mapping of COVID-19 guidelines.
Overall, it was great to see the GRADE Working Group again in Poland and learn more about the ongoing projects and plans. Our participation in these events is essential to develop all the GRADEpro functionalities needed to enable researchers to conduct their studies, run their projects, and create guidelines and recommendations in the most efficient and effective way possible.
The next GRADE Working Group Virtual meeting will occur on November 10, 2022.
More information can be found here: GRADE Working Group.