Health

Consumer guide to understanding and applying the concepts of evidence-based medicine to treatment.

A defense of evidence-based medicine from the perspective of women's health concerns.

Discussion of the applicability of evidence-based medicine in Latin American countries.

Describes how to estimate a treatment's effectiveness and explains the concepts of risk reduction, and number needed to treat. From the Canadian Medical Association Journal. [English and French]

Explains the use of confidence intervals in testing hypotheses. From the Canadian Medical Association Journal. [English and French]

Guide to the Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) program within the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). [2005]

Interative tips from the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine on formulating clinical questions and conducting critical appraisals, accompanying the text "Evidence-based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM".

Reviews multiple alternative systems for rating the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations.

Discriminates odds from risks, and the nature of an odds ratio as an alternative to a risk ratio. From the Evidence-Based Medicine Teaching Tips Working Group.

Teaching tips on the use of clinical prediction rules in applying evidence consistently in everyday clinical practice. From the Evidence-Based Medicine Teaching Tips Working Group.

Teaching tips on confounding variables and the statistical adjustment for differences in prognostic variables. From the Evidence-Based Medicine Teaching Tips Working Group.

Teaching tips on using likelihood ratios. From the Evidence-Based Medicine Teaching Tips Working Group.

Critical review of six clinical practice guidelines development handbooks.

Provides workshops, resources and background information for healthcare professionals, with research tools and educational material to download. Based at Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, Oxford.

Resources and including evidence-based guidelines for primary care providers . From The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP).

Learn to read clinical papers with confidence with courses on critical appraisal and evidence-based medicine

Part I of a two part series on how to select and interpret diagnostic tests to confirm or exclude a diagnosis, using a full working example. [PDF]

Part II of a two part series on how to select and interpret diagnostic tests to confirm or exclude a diagnosis, using a full working example.

Assessment of where we stand in evidence-based medicine as of 2008.

Slide presentation given to second year medical students on the principles of evidence-based medcine. From the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University (Montreal, Canada).

Compilation of presentations on how evidence-based medicine in resource-limited settings can be translated into improved health outcomes. [2013]

Overview of the precepts of EBM and reflections on some current issues affecting its progress. [2012]

This guide, tabbed by topic, is designed to assist health care professionals and students become effective and efficient users of the medical literature; includes a resource collection and glossary. From the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Third of a four-part comprehensive mini-course on Evidence-Based Medicine; covers the principles, methodology and appraisal of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, including use of odds ratios and relative risks.

Summary and critical review of hierarchies of evidence, contrasting the different current approaches and noting their limitations and merits. Chapter from "Neurology: An Evidence-Based Approach". [2012]

The origin of levels of evidence and their relevance to the EBM, with examples drawn from the field of plastic surgery. [2012]

Comprehensive guide to the process of conducting meta-analysis: selecting articles, inclusion criteria, effect sizes, practical analysis execution, and estimating publication bias. From the British Psychological Society.

Exceptionally detailed handbook of the procedures necessary to conduct a systematic review. From the authoritative Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at the University of York, publisher of DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects).

Detailed exposition of all the critical procedures of conducting SRs and MAs, with invaluable tips and guides, including on the use of the Cochrane automatic SR/MA software tool RevMan.

Practical lessons on the highly variable quality of systematic reviews themselves, with an illustrative case study showing how different systematic reviews on the same question can arrive at opposite conclusions. [2001]

The seminal paper on how to resolve discordance across systematic reviews, from the eminent expert Alejandro Jadad at McMaster University. [1997]

Guidance on some of the major limitations besetting systematic reviews (including limited datasets, unpublished data, and both statistical and clinical heterogeneity). [2007]

Provides criteria to use to critically appraise systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and documents some of the key pitfalls of each. [2003]

The cautions needed in reading and conducting a systematic review, especially strong on sensitivity analysis, meta-regression, sub-group analysis, publication bias and missing data. [2005]

A 'how to' guide to the development of clinical practice guidelines, including synthesis, grading, presentation and the derivation of recommendations. [2012]

Discusses the strengths and limitations of narrative and systematic reviews and meta-analyses and how to critically appraise them. [2008]

First of a four-part comprehensive mini-course on Evidence-Based Medicine; covers basic EBM principles and motivation.

Second of a four-part comprehensive mini-course on Evidence-Based Medicine; covers the purpose, design and different types of RCTs.

Fourth of a four-part comprehensive mini-course on Evidence-Based Medicine; covers a sample clinical scenario through the process of the art of formulating answerable clinical questions, finding evidence, critically appraising evidence, and putting evidence into practice.

How to use the PICO Strategy for the construction of an appropriate research question and review of the literature.

Practical guidelines for minimizing the risk of conducting a mediocre meta-analysis and for supporting researchers to accurately evaluate the published findings. [2013]

Discussion of study validity and the assessment of different forms of bias. [2012]

Critically examines the issue of what category of evidence should be placed at the peak of the evidence-based hierarchy/pyramid, either the randomized clinical trial (RCT), or the systematic review with meta-analysis (SR/MA), then outlines how to improve the value of meta-analytic evidence. [2014]

Guidelines for when and how to search, and assess, "grey literature" (typically non-peer-reviewed conference abstracts, books, dissertations, regulatory reports, etc.) when conducting a systematic review or meta-analysis. From Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). [2013]

Describes and illustrates with practical examples the concept and procedure of random allocation as used in randomized controlled trials/studies (RCTs), including simple, block and stratified randomization. [2014]

Describes the potential superiority in well-defined cases of adaptive randomization which allocates more patients to the better treatments as the data accumulates in the trial. [2012]

Describes I-SPY, a groundbreaking dynamic adaptive randomization model for accelerating both identification and regulatory approval of effective investigational agents. [2013]

Demonstrates an assessment of sugar-sweetened beverages and type 2 diabetes as an example to show how the new technique called ‘evidence mapping’ can be used to organize studies and evaluate design heterogeneity prior to meta-analysis. [2014]

Concise review of the essential concepts and implementation of evidence-based medicine. [2014]

An article from the Medical Journal of Australia explains the basic processes and concepts, with descriptions of common computer-assisted research tools.