[GRADE: Evidence to Decision (EtD) frameworks - a systematic and transparent approach to making well informed healthcare choices. 1: Introduction].

In healthcare, the processes, criteria, and evidence that decision makers use to reach their judgments often remain unclear. Decision makers sometimes neglect important criteria, give undue weight to criteria, or do not use the best available evidence to inform their judgments. Thus, the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) working group developed a system to support transparent decision making. The purpose of the Evidence-to-Decision (EtD) framework is to help people use evidence in a structured and transparent way to inform decisions in the context of clinical recommendations, coverage decisions, and health system, or public health recommendations and decisions. EtD frameworks include the formulation of the question, an assessment of the evidence, and drawing conclusions. EtD frameworks inform users of recommendations about judgments that were made and the evidence supporting these judgments by making the basis for decisions transparent to target audiences. EtD frameworks also facilitate dissemination of recommendations.