Thursday, December 1, 2011

UpToDate | from Evidences to Recommendation

UpToDate follows a systematic hierarchy of evidences making information flow in a right direction bring in ease and comfort to the user.

Evidences are derived from various resources such as:

ü  460 peer reviewed journals

ü  Online database search of Medline, Cochrane, Clinical Evidences & ACP Journals Club

ü  Guidelines that adhere to principles of evidence evaluation described above

ü  Published information regarding clinical trials such as reports from the Food and Drug Administration, as well as other sources of information produced by federal agencies such as the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health

ü  Proceedings of major national meetings

ü  The clinical experience and observations of UpToDate authors, editors and peer reviewers
Data is structured in PICO format i.e. Population, Intervention, Comparators, Outcomes

The structure:

Meta analyses of randomised trials with high methodological  quality
Strong evidence as all relevant data is available
Randomised trials with

ü  methodological limitations
ü  Observational studies
ü  Unsystematic clinical observations
Non-high quality
Summarises the key studies bearing on the clinical issues at hand
Data not stated explicitly
Users can click on the reference and bring up the Medline abstract from the journals or other linked material
Grading Process


Component
Description
1 or 2
Strength of recommendation
A or B or C
Quality of the evidence supporting the recommendation


 It is time to move from Evidences to Recommendations.


http://www.uptodate.com