For many years, guidance for clinical medicine has been developed through a process of systematic, critical appraisal of the available evidence. For health protection, work is in progress to develop a range of methods to assess the evidence used to inform recommendations. Like all evidence-based methods, which follow an exhaustive process of literature searches and review of evidence, these methods are resource and time intensive. The average time to produce clinical guidance is 29
months.
The influenza A(H1N1)v pandemic has led to a situation where the rapid production of guidance has been essential. This poster looks at the challenges that were faced producing travel guidance, and how they were managed.