Are the Institute of Medicine's trustworthiness guidelines trustworthy?

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has published a set of eight standards for guideline development groups (GDGs) to derive trustworthy clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). We investigated the adherence of these IOM guidelines to its own standards. The IOM document passed two of its own standards ("GDG-Systematic Review Team Interaction" and "GDG Composition"), only partially passed two others ("Articulation of Recommendation" and "External Review") and failed to pass four ("Establishing Transparency," "Management of Conflict of Interest," "Establishing Evidence Foundations" and "Updating"). The IOM standards for the development of CPGs do not meet their own criteria of trustworthiness. Further study is needed to determine the best methodology to evaluate CPGs.