Healthcare
Richtlijnendatabase
The Richtlijnendatabase calls itself the central place for evidence-based guidelines across all specialties, developed by medical specialists affiliated with the scientific societies and the Knowledge Institute of the Federation of Medical Specialists. Guidelines there are built from modules, and a module consists of a key question, a recommendation, the supporting evidence, the considerations and accountability information. That structure is what makes the database usable: you can see what a recommendation rests on and which trade-offs were weighed alongside it, rather than reading only the conclusion.
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What this source does not give you
Maintenance is modular, so dates within a single guideline diverge: the publication date and the validity-review field belong to the section you are reading, not to the guideline as a whole. A guideline that looks current may contain modules that have not been revised for years. Beyond that, this is professional documentation, not patient information — and a recommendation by a scientific society is a professional norm, not a statutory rule.
Legal domains for which LEO consults this source
Dutch legal domains; each link opens the domain page on leo.prudai.com.
Frequently asked questions
- How is a guideline in this database structured?
- In modules. Each module consists of a key question, a recommendation, the supporting evidence, the considerations and accountability information. The evidence section holds the literature and how it was searched and selected; the considerations cover matters such as the working group's expertise, costs, availability of facilities and organisational aspects. Citing only the recommendation therefore leaves most of the document unread — and precisely the part explaining why the recommendation reads as it does.
- How do I know whether a recommendation is still current?
- From the date fields on the section in front of you: the publication date and the validity-review field, alongside the initiating body and the accountability information. Because maintenance is modular, those dates apply per module rather than per guideline. A citation should therefore name the module with its own dates, not the guideline title with the date of its landing page.
- Who authorises a guideline?
- The scientific societies and patient organisations approve the amended or new modules. This happens at the end of a cycle that runs roughly one to one and a half years per cluster and passes through five phases: need-for-update, prioritisation, development, consultation and authorisation. A module's accountability information records which parties were involved.
- Is this the same information as on Thuisarts.nl?
- No, but the two are connected. The Richtlijnendatabase holds the professional guideline with its evidence and considerations; Thuisarts.nl translates guidelines from the doctors' societies into plain-language public information. The Federation of Medical Specialists is involved in both. The difference in audience is the difference in use: a lay text cannot serve as evidence, and a guideline module is not written to hand to a patient.