Background: In 2008 the German AOK-Bundesverband commissioned the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Health Technology Assessment (LBI-HTA) to develop a decision-aid on the vaccination against Human Papillomavirus (HPV) for young women and girls (online since June 2009: www.hpv-entscheidungshilfe.de). The LBI-HTA conducted smaller updates in 2010 and 2011. In 2014 we received the order to re-update the decision aid. This time we planned an additional paper version of the online decision-aid (the present project report), allowing us to add Austria-specific information.

Methods: We searched selectively for epidemiological data on relevant websites. To update information on effectiveness and safety of the HPV vaccines we conducted a systematic literature search in Medline (via Ovid), yielding 314 hits for the search period of 2008-2014. We ordered 60 full text articles and identified further 40 articles via manual search. In combination with the 150 full texts of previous HPV-projects, 250 full text articles were available as information basis for the decision aid. We did not assess internal validity of included studies in a standardised way. One researcher extracted data, a second researcher reassessed the extracted data for completeness and correctness.

Results: The first part of the decision aid contains information about the virus and HPV-related diseases. The three main pages deal with the correlation between HPV and cervical carcinoma, the incidence of cervical carcinoma and the risk of getting infected with HPV, and of both developing cervical carcinoma and dying from it. Additional information is provided on five information pages about HPV and genital warts, the identification and treatment of cervical dysplasia/carcinoma and the international comparison of (cervical carcinoma) prevalence. The second part of the decision aid informs about the HPV-vaccine(s). The four main pages provide information about HPV-vaccination recommendations and the results of the vaccine efficacy against cervical dysplasia, and summarise circumstances of known ineffectiveness and information about potential side effects. A further eight 'chapters' contain additional information about the vaccine (e.g. the observed efficacy in boys/males or the effectiveness of the vaccine in longer observation periods). Finally, the third part of the decision aid summarises the information provided in parts I and II: eleven short information blocks can be rated according to the relevance for the decision (mainly pro or mainly contra vaccination or of no influence).

Conclusion: The updated, completely revised and partly new structured decision-aid went online on 17.3.2015. For the first time, online contents are available in paper form due to the present project report. Thus we were able to add country specific data for Austria and provide further, more detailed information (which have not been included in the online version due to their complexity).