Era of Evidence Based Medicine: Is Clinical Expertise Outdated?

Abstract

concept. However, it has more than made up for its late entry by showing exponential growth over the past two decades. Pioneered in early 1990s by Guyatt et al, it represents the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making clinical decisions about the care of individual patients1. Although new to modern times, its philosophical underpinnings have been traced back to China in older times2 . In simple terms EBM helps the clinicians make decisions supported by evidence. The philosophy of EBM can be summed up as follows: if there is evidence that something is of good and of benefit to the patient, then use it; if there is evidence that something is not good for the patient and can be harmful, then do not use it3. In this context Evidence Based Practice (EBP) would pertain to any practice that applies up-to-date information from relevant and valid research about the usefulness of various diagnostic tests or the predictive power of prognostic factors or the beneficence of a particular treatment method. Multiple ongoing clinical trials, ever increasing number of biomedical journals and thousands of articles published every month have ensured floods of information. Going by most conservative of estimates this is likely to grow exponentially in the coming years. Also growing use of the internet and other modes of communication has ensured that most of this information Era of Evidence Based Medicine: Is clinical expertise outdated?