Background: The compliance of physicians with the clinical practice guidelines (CPG) is insufficient and needs to be improved.
Objective: To determine whether standalone computerized CPG within the PRESGUID project could improve compliance with the recommendations than the use of CPG in textual format.
Method: Comparative analyses of the responses made by two groups of resident physicians to a set of clinical cases. One group of residents had access to the CPG exclusively in textual format (paper document) while the second group had access to the CPG exclusively in computerized format within the PRESGUID software applications.
Results: The computable CPG are more efficient than the paper-based CPG regarding responses in compliance with the recommendations especially those judged to be relevant by an expert.
Conclusion: These results should encourage the bodies responsible for diffusing CPG to promote the computable format and to facilitate the computerization process.