IAM Medical Guidelines

IAM Medical Guidelines is designed to help Canadian medical professionals to become more familiar with a curated selection of the many Clinical Practice Guidelines they are increasingly expected to know about.

IAM is a single container for these Guidelines; we started with an accredited program in partnership with the Canadian Thoracic Society and their 2012 Guideline Update: Diagnosis and Management of Asthma in Preschoolers, Children and Adults. This was followed with guidelines on prevention of exacerbations of COPD (2014) and recommendations for the diagnosis and treatment of Asthma in preschoolers (2015).

Later, we introduced new Breast Cancer Survivorship guidelines deriving from the work of Marian Luctkar-Flude RN PhD, Alice Aiken PhD, Mary Ann McColl PhD, Joan Tranmer RN PhD and Hugh Langley MD CCFP, published in Canadian Family Physician (Le Médecin de famille canadien) Vol 61: november 2015. In addition to recommendations for surveillance, these guidelines provide direction to primary care providers on providing comprehensive survivorship care including prevention, screening and interventions for common long-term and late effects of breast cancer and its treatment.

Our latest guideline is Deprescribing, supporting health care providers and patients in reducing or stopping medications that may be harmful or no longer needed. This channel, presented as of a set of Decision Trees, embodies deprescribing algorithms developed and supported by Dr. Barbara Farrell and Dr. Cara Tannenbaum — a pharmacist and physician who work with older people and are concerned about the risks associated with medications in this population — and their research teams at the Bruyère Research Institute (Ottawa) and Université de Montréal. See https://Depescribing.org. In addition to decision trees for deprescribing antihyperglycemics (AHGs), antipsychotics (APs), benzodiazepine receptor agonists (BZRAs) cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEIs) and proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), this channel also contains vital information on methodologies, alternative and non-medical therapies and availability of graduated drug dosages.

We simplify study by:
• Featuring only guidelines published by recognized authorities
• Selecting the recommendations most important to the intended audience of each guideline, using a Delphi process
• Working with guideline authors to condense each recommendation for easy scanning on the “Topics” page
• Using Push Notification where appropriate to reinforce learning
• Optimizing the guideline for easy reading on small devices, while maintaining access to the full original content

We encourage study by:
• Promoting reflective learning, using ITPCRG’s research-proven Information Assessment Method (https://www.mcgill.ca/iam/home-page).
• Working with the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (Royal College) to provide Continuing Medical Education credits for each submitted IAM questionnaire (where applicable).
• In the case of the Lung Guidelines, we provide a Forum where the Recommendations can be discussed.
• In the case of the deprescribing guidelines, the users are asked to complete a questionnaire each time they complete a decision tree, reinforcing learning by reflection.

All the app content is stored on our servers and downloaded to your device when you add a new channel, so you can study anywhere – the subway, in-flight, at the cottage… As new guidelines are added, they will become available for download, and corrections and updates to existing guidelines will be incorporated seamlessly. The app keeps itself up-to-date.

Our goal is to become a one-stop shop for Medical Guidelines, so that you only need to invest your valuable time (and homepage real estate) in a single app, rather than downloading and learning about a separate app for each guideline.