Where's the evidence? How to find clinical-effectiveness information.

Abstract

The National Health Service Centre for Reviews and Dissemination is the sibling organization to the UK Cochrane Centre, which is part of the Cochrane Collaboration. The two centers form part of a UK-government-funded initiative to provide information for research-based health care in a variety of ways, ranging from databases to printed publications. The new evidence-based culture in health care presents new challenges to healthcare professionals, who have discovered that systematic reviews and evidence-based guidelines are useful tools in the struggle to stay abreast of published research. However, the numbers of reviews and guidelines are increasing, and keeping track of them presents a new problem. Keeping up-to-data with research is a continuing issue because of constraints in time, resources, and poor search interfaces. There also are challenges in acquiring or developing skills, such as information retrieval to locate research, as well as critical appraisal abilities to evaluate research. However, there are many existing resources that can supply information on clinical effectiveness and many developing services that are trying to provide access to research information in timely and intuitive ways.