The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is the independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on promoting good health and preventing and treating ill health. NICE guidance is developed using the expertise of the NHS and the wider healthcare community, including healthcare and other professionals, patients, service users and carers, the academic world and the healthcare industry.

This guidelines manual explains how NICE develops and updates clinical guidelines. It provides advice on the technical aspects of clinical guideline development and the methods used. It is aimed primarily at staff at the National Collaborating Centres (NCCs) and the Internal Clinical Guidelines Programme within the Centre for Clinical Practice (CCP) at NICE that are commissioned by NICE to develop NICE clinical guidelines, and at members of the Guideline Development Groups (GDGs) that develop the individual guidelines. It is also likely to be useful and of interest to a broader audience, including all guideline developers.

The advice in this manual draws on international guideline development methodology, and the experience and expertise of the clinical guidelines team in the CCP at NICE and the NCCs. It is based on internationally acceptable criteria of quality, as detailed in the Appraisal of Guidelines Research and Evaluation (AGREE II) instrument.

The structure of this manual follows the development of a NICE clinical guideline from inception through to publication.