Papers detailing the results of the first year of the Design for Implementation: The Future of Trauma Research and Clinical Guidance (DFI) Conference Series can now be accessed in a special issue of Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open (TSACO), published this month. Convened in February 2024, the inaugural conference brought together a uniquely multidisciplinary group of attendees with a clear, shared vision: to design trauma guidance that is more effective, equitable, and implementable at the bedside.

The papers are as follows:

• The Design for Implementation: The Future of Trauma Research and Clinical Guidance (DFI) Conference Series Editorial.
• Conference Proceedings for the 2024 Design for Implementation: The Future of Trauma Research and Clinical Guidance Conference Series. The conference proceedings underscore both the urgency and opportunity in this domain. Presenters and participants worked collaboratively to define a “Minimum Viable Product” for future guidance systems, specifying key objectives, audiences, risks, and performance indicators. This structured approach laid the foundation for iterative design and consensus-building.
• TRAUMA: making trauma clinical guidance more implementable. The TRAUMA framework (Transparency, Robust inclusivity, Adaptability, Usability, Measurability, Accessibility) is proposed as a pathway to enhance the implementability of guidance.
• Understanding the rural injury providers’ experiences with trauma clinical guidance: a qualitative case series. Rural providers emphasize the need for visual tools, easy access, resource-appropriate recommendations, and centralized endorsement to support decision-making in resource-constrained environments.
• Trauma community clinical guidance needs: a mixed-methods iterative consensus-building study. A mixed-methods consensus-building study reinforces the importance of collaboration across professional societies and identified accessibility, evidence integration, and patient-centered outcomes as priorities for future guidance.
• Dissecting inequity: global systematic review of trauma clinical guidance. A global systematic review reveals persistent inequities, with the majority of trauma guidance produced in high-income countries despite the disproportionate burden of trauma in low- and middle-income regions. While most resources are open access, cost and language barriers continue to restrict reach and impact. Importantly, the review demonstrates that methodological expert involvement strongly predicts guidance quality, suggesting a clear path to strengthening future development processes.

Collectively, these first-year findings point toward a coordinated redesign of trauma clinical guidance that prioritizes equity, usability, and global collaboration.

Articles resulting from Year 2 are currently being reviewed; and the third and final meeting in the series will be held in February, 2026. To attend virtually, register HERE.