Critical Care Connections.com was developed to organize our knowledge generation, knowledge synthesis, and knowledge translation activities related to Critical Care on the Internet. Our overall objective is to improve the care provided in ICUs with the expectation that improving the process of care, this will translate into improved clinical outcomes experienced by critically ill patients. By harnessing the power of the World Wide Web, we propose to influence practice in Canada and beyond.

We have developed goals, strategies, objectives, performance indicators, and timelines to accomplish our tasks. We propose to disseminate our evidence-based clinical practice guidelines on the internet with web-based "Tools" and "Training Kits" to empower local opinion leaders to influence change. We propose to develop a process whereby an ICU anywhere in the world can enter in data over the Internet on key process of care variables (Eg. Nutrition Support, Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia [VAP] Prevention, etc.) and outcome variables (for example, Family Satisfaction and Severity Adjusted Mortality, etc.). In return for their data, we will provide them with a report that compares their performance to the clinical practice guidelines ("Best Practice") and to other ICUs in the database ("Best Achievable Practice").

In addition to developing, maintaining and disseminating current, evidence-based, clinical practice guidelines, we also seek to generate new knowledge by organizing and conducting multi-center clinical trials. Building on our success with web-based data collection for a multi-center clinical trial, we propose to convert the data management platform for use with trials of any critical care interventions and work with our colleagues around the world to develop high quality, scientifically rigorous, research protocols.