GRADE workshop

An upcoming workshop of interest: The GRADE approach to Diagnostic Tests and Strategies.
February 12, 2010
Montreal
$250

The GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessments, Development and Evaluation) group has been doing great work for nearly a decade now, developing a common, sensible and transparent approach to grading quality of evidence and strength of recommendations. Their approach is increasingly being adopted worldwide. Check out their website for additional information.

Systematic Reviews

Good information in a nutshell. Intended for librarians, but good for all, especially the links:
Systematic Reviews - Getting Started with Your Patrons

PRISMA Statement

The Cochrane Bias Methods Group announces...

The PRISMA Statement has just been published which is the updated QUOROM guidelines for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Details of free access to the full text of the Statement and the fuller document of 'explanation and elaboration' of the reporting items are given below:

PRISMA Guidelines:
Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, The PRISMA Group (2009) Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement. PLoS Med 6(7): e1000097. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097 (available here)

Explanation and Elaboration:
Liberati A, Altman DG, Tetzlaff J, Mulrow C, Gøtzsche PC, et al. 2009 The PRISMA Statement for Reporting Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of Studies That Evaluate Health Care Interventions: Explanation and Elaboration. PLoS Med 6(7): e1000100. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000100 (available here)

Hear ye, Hear ye: Podcasts on Systematic Reviews

Access conference podcasts from the recent US Cochrane Center Stakeholder Summit (June 4-5, 2009)on Using Quality Systematic Reviews to Inform Evidence-based Guidelines.

Take a listen to experts presenting the latest methods and practices for systematic review and guideline development, along with successes, pitfalls, current challenges and future opportunities for evidence-based guidelines.

Narrative Evidence Based Medicine

Following Rita Charon's work, I call to your attention two noteworthy articles:

Charon, Rita and Peter Wyer. The art of medicine: Narrative evidence based medicine. 2008 Lancet 371, January 26, 296-7

Goyal RK, Charon R, Lekas H, Fullilove MT, Devlin MJ, Diplnf LF, Wyer PC. 'A local habitation and a name': How narrative evidence-based medicine transforms the translational research paradigm. 2008 Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 14:732-41.

At Columbia University, Charon and others comprise The Narrative Evidence Based Medicine Working Group

Good web offering

EBP for the EBP (Extremely Busy Practitioner): Using Search Engines and Databases
Susan Fowler - Washington University

NYC workshop of note

As more and more practitioners desire to implement evidence based health care, here's a workshop of interest in my home state:

Teaching Evidence Assimilation for Collaborative Healthcare - please note the excellent plenary speakers

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

FYI, news from the Cochrane Collaboration:

The 2008 impact factors have now been published by Thomson ISI. UB users have access via Journal Citation Reports.

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews has an IMPACT FACTOR OF 5.182 and is ranked 12th out of 107 in the ISI category Medicine, General & Internal. The 2007 IF was 4.654 and the ranking was 14th out of 100.

IOM's Priority Topics

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 called on the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to recommend a list of priority topics to be the initial focus of a new national investment in comparative effectiveness research.

The IOM’s recommendations are contained in the report, Initial National Priorities for Comparative Effectiveness Research. (read online free)

Here is the list of 100 Initial Priority Topics for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The topics are listed by groups of 25. The first quartile is considered the highest priority group and the fourth quartile the lowest. Within each group, however, the order of individual topics does not indicate rank.