Introduction:

Clinical practice guidelines (CPG) are a set of recommendations for professionals, patients, and families, in order to make decisions about health care. The CPG respond to the need for concise, accurate, practical, and up to date information. In the field of mental health, Colombia has developed three GPC; alcohol (GPC-OH), depression (GPC-TDA), and schizophrenia.

Objectives:

To describe the Web Portal traffic related to psychiatry guidelines, with emphasis on the number of visits, distribution throughout Colombian cities, and estimating user behaviour patterns.

Methods:

An evaluation was made of the traffic at the Clinical Practice Guidelines Web Portal of the Ministry of Health and Social Protection between 2013 and 2015 (two years of observation since the inauguration of the Portal).

Results:

Outofthe45GPCpublishedonthewebsite, the CPG-OHrepresented1.21%ofallpage views of the Portal. CPG-TDA reached 1.52% (accumulated percentage of 2.73%), being the eighth most consulted guideline, withCPG-OHbeingnumber16.Thehighestmeanmonthly number of visits for this group of guideliness was for the CPG-OH for health professionals (353 visits/month), and the lowest was for the CPG-AD for patients and relatives (24 single visits/month). Bogotá D.C. was the city where health careers accessed the guidelines more often. TheguidelinesforpatientsandrelativeswereconsultedmoreinVillavicencio, Cúcuta, Manizales, Pereira, and Pasto.

Conclusions:

The web portal partially fulfills the purpose of circulating the CPG in Colombia. The visits to the CPG of mental health is quite low, and requires better dissemination strategies that allow the use of information and communication technology.

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