Roger Kerry, Thinking about guidelines:
My take home thoughts:
What is the real world, clinical role of guidelines? (provoked by Jeremy Howick’s suggestion that guidelines shouldn’t make recommendations, Sarah Weiten’s talk on values and mechanisms, and Sieste Wieringa’s talk on induction and reasoning)
Can a more holistic conceptualisation of causation really be integrated into guidelines which take population data as central to their development? (provoked by Stephen Mumford and Rani Anjum’s comments of the background philosophy of causation, as well as Karin Engebretsen and Elena Rocca’s talks on diagnosis and bench study data)
Can a guideline and evidence-based system truly move beyond hierarchies? (provoked by NICE’s Beth Shaw review of multiple evidence sources and their integration into guideline development. A beautiful talk, but I still think there is hierarchy at the core when push comes to shove. Show me I’m wrong!)
What is the future of implementation, governance, abuse-control strategies for guidelines? (provoked by Fiona Moffatt’s, Mary Chambers’, and Samantha Copeland’s highly informed musings on things from deep sociological concerns to PPI and the reality of the clinical shop-floor, and analogical thinking)
The planned conference for next year should turn out to be a hot-bed of challenge, controversy, and progress for all.
Causality, Complexity and Evidence in Health Sciences 
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