Individualized Clinical Practice Guidelines: The Next Step in the Evidence-based Health Care Evolution?

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are playing an increasing role in the evolution of evidence-based health care. CPGs involve a process in which the best evidence in translated into best practice principles that are then applied on a wide range of patients. Although there are clear benefits in terms of simplicity, applying broad recommendations on a diverse group of patients can lead to wide variations in outcomes on an individual patient level. The individualized guideline (IG) is an approach that builds on the concept of the CPG by specifying treatment recommendation based on important individual baseline characteristics. The IG approach could potentially lead to superior outcomes but necessitates a substantial increase in complexity to the CPG development process.