It has been 36 years since the first version of essential medicine list (EML) was released by WHO in 1977,when 18 versions of WHO-EML and four versions of children essential medicine list have been released. In 1982, the first version of national essential medicine list (NEML) was released in China. Till 2012, there were eight versions of NEML in total. This paper introduces WHO-EML in aspects of origin, idea, definition, design, and innovation of selection methodology,principle, and workflow; compares the evolution, design, selection methodology between WHO-EML and Chinese NEML; and points out the challenges of evaluation and decision making of Chinese NEML.
After 38 years of development, the procedure of selection and evaluation of the World Health Organization Essential Medicine List (WHO EML) is increasingly scientific and formal. However, peer review for the applications of WHO EML is always required in a short period. It is necessary to build up a set of methods and processes for rapid review. The most important items for the rapid review of WHO EML peer reviewers are: 1) to confirm the requirements and identify the purposes; 2) to establish the research questions and translate the questions into the ‘Participants, Interventions, Comparators, Outcomes, Study design' (PICOS) format; 3) to search and screen available evidence, for which high-level evidence is preferred, such as systematic reviews or meta-analyses, health technology assessment (HTA), clinical guidelines; 4) to extract data, where we extract primary information based on the purposes; 5) to synthesize data by qualitative methods, assess the quality of evidence, and compare the results; 6) to provide the answers to the applications, quality of evidences and strength of recommendations. Our study established a set of methods and processes for the rapid review of WHO EML peer review, and our findings were used to guide the reviewers to fulfill the 19th WHO EML peer review. The methods and processes were feasible and met the necessary requirements in terms of time and quality. Continuous improvement and evaluation in practice are warranted.