During the years 2010-2013, the LBI-HTA conducted 9 reports within the project "Re-orientation of the Austrian parent-child preventive care programme" and developed a comprehensive scientific basis for the further development of the parent-child preventive care programme in Austria. The process of appraising decision support documents, especially the last LBI-HTA report on screening recommendations from international evidence-based guidelines, was not yet defined. Therefore, in project part Xa, we analysed and described national and international practice examples for the appraisal and contextualization of evidence in terms of similarities and differences.

We identified the following similarities of the chosen practice examples: an interdisciplinary and multi-professional guideline development group (sometimes also including patient groups), the declaration of conflicts of interest of the group members, the comprehensive and systematic search and appraisal of the existing evidence (usually using a hierarchical literature search process), formal or informal methods for reaching consensus and for formulating the recommendations based on the available evidence and considering additional aspects (e.g. transferability of study results or the risk-benefit balance). We found small differences between the analysed processes, which can be attributed to different health care systems or institutional conditional frameworks.

On the basis of these results and in consultation with the Austrian Ministry of Health, a process for further developing the mother-child-pass was established (Part Xb). This process consists of two parts: In the first part of the process, an interdisciplinary and multi-professional expert group ("consensus conference") with experts from various professional associations and institutions will be established. In a series of meetings, the results of the guideline synthesis ("Reorientation of the parent-child preventive care programme part IX") for each disease or risk factor will be presented and discussed by the expert group, using defined criteria (based on the WHO screening criteria). The expert group will then formulate recommendations in favour of or against the inclusion of a screening or counselling measure into the new mother-child-pass programme. Each recommendation will have to be justified on the basis of the criteria and will be noted in the protocol. In the second part of the process, all recommendations and statements will be presented to a decision-making body. This committee will examine the recommendations of the expert group with regard to their feasibility ("reality check").