Internationally, the vision of a ‘Digital Trustworthy Evidence Ecosystem’ is being pursued with clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) as one element of such a system. Consequently, CPGs and CPG repositories need to be digitalised.

The objective of this prospective, before-after study is to evaluate the impact of digitalising a quality-assured CPG registry using the international data format standard ‘Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources’ (FHIR). This includes the architecture of the registry, the format of individual guidelines and application programming interfaces to import and export CPG content. The study is guided by a scoping review.

The primary outcome is the usability of the digitalised CPG registry and CPG content for different user groups comprising CPG developers, CPG administrators, health care professionals and patients—including at the point of care in in- and outpatient settings—and technical professionals as users of CPG content in digital applications.

For the before-after comparison, semi-quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (focus groups) methods are applied. All user groups will be involved in a baseline analysis to assess user expectations and technical requirements. According to the results, the digitalised guideline registry will be implemented. The intervention comprises the testing of the digitalised registry with guideline content by all user groups. Analysis of outcomes will include formative and summative evaluation. Final results and further research needs will be discussed in a World Café with all stakeholders.

The Ethics Committee of the Berlin chamber of physicians, in accordance with its code of conduct §15 section 1 (Eth-KB-24-11) confirmed that no ethical approval is needed for this study. The study is registered in the German Clinical Trials Registry (No: DRKS00034111). Results will be presented at national and international conferences, published in peer-reviewed journals and on the website of the funding institution.

German Clinical Trials Registry (No: DRKS00034111).