Top

Published in:

Open Access 01-12-2020 | Database

Epistemonikos: a comprehensive database of systematic reviews for health decision-making

Authors: Gabriel Rada, Daniel Pérez, Felipe Araya-Quintanilla, Camila Ávila, Gonzalo Bravo-Soto, Rocío Bravo-Jeria, Aldo Cánepa, Daniel Capurro, Victoria Castro-Gutiérrez, Valeria Contreras, Javiera Edwards, Jorge Faúndez, Damián Garrido, Magdalena Jiménez, Valentina Llovet, Diego Lobos, Francisco Madrid, Macarena Morel-Marambio, Antonia Mendoza, Ignacio Neumann, Luis Ortiz-Muñoz, José Peña, Marcelo Pérez, Franco Pesce, Carmen Rain, Solange Rivera, Javiera Sepúlveda, Mauricio Soto, Felipe Valverde, Juan Vásquez, Francisca Verdugo-Paiva, Camilo Vergara, Cynthia Zavala, Ricardo Zilleruelo-Ramos, on behalf of Epistemonikos project

Published in: BMC Medical Research Methodology | Issue 1/2020

Abstract

Background

Systematic reviews allow health decisions to be informed by the best available research evidence. However, their number is proliferating quickly, and many skills are required to identify all the relevant reviews for a specific question.

Methods and findings

We screen 10 bibliographic databases on a daily or weekly basis, to identify systematic reviews relevant for health decision-making. Using a machine-based approach developed for this project we select reviews, which are then validated by a network of more than 1000 collaborators. After screening over 1,400,000 records we have identified more than 300,000 systematic reviews, which are now stored in a single place and accessible through an easy-to-use search engine. This makes Epistemonikos the largest database of its kind.

Conclusions

Using a systematic approach, recruiting a broad network of collaborators and implementing automated methods, we developed a one-stop shop for systematic reviews relevant for health decision making.

Available only for authorised users

Sackett D, Straus S, Richardson W, Rosenberg W, Haynes R. Evidence-based medicine: how to teach and practice EBM. Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone; 2000..

Bastian H, Glasziou P, Chalmers I. Seventy-five trials and eleven systematic reviews a day: how will we ever keep up? PLoS Med. 2010;7(9):e1000326..CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Oxford Centre for Evidence-based Medicine – Levels of Evidence (March 2009). [cited 2 April 2018] Available from: http://www.cebm.net/oxford-centre-evidence-based-medicine-levels-evidence-march-2009/.

Tebala GD. What is the future of biomedical research? Med Hypotheses. 2015;85(4):488–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2015.07.003.CrossRefPubMed

Ioannidis JP. The mass production of redundant, misleading, and conflicted systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Milbank Q. 2016;94(3):485–514. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12210.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Ely J, Osheroff J, Ebell M, Chambliss M, Vinson D, Stevermer J, et al. Obstacles to answering doctors’ questions about patient care with evidence: qualitative study. BMJ. 2002;324:710.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Shariff SZ, Bejaimal SA, Sontrop JM, Iansavichus AV, Haynes RB, Weir MAGA. Retrieving clinical evidence: a comparison of PubMed and Google scholar for quick clinical searches. J Med Internet Res. 2013;15:e164.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Rathbone J, Carter M, Hoffmann T, Glasziou P. A comparison of the performance of seven key bibliographic databases in identifying all relevant systematic reviews of interventions for hypertension. Syst Rev. 2016;5:27. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-016-0197-5.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Petticrew M, Song F, Wilson P, Wright K. Quality-assessed reviews of health care interventions and the database of abstracts of reviews of effectiveness (DARE). Int J Technol Assess Health Care. 1999;15(4):671–8.CrossRefPubMed

10.

Rada G, Perez D, Capurro D. Epistemonikos: a free, relational, collaborative, multilingual database of health evidence. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2013;192:486–90.PubMed

11.

Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, PRISMA Group. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. PLoS Med. 2009;6(7):e1000097. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

12.

Higgins JPT, Thomas J, Chandler J, Cumpston M, Li T, Page MJ, Welch VA (editors). Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews of interventions version 6.0 (updated July 2019). Cochrane, 2019. Available from: www.training.cochrane.org/handbook.

13.

Montori VM, Wilczynski NL, Morgan D, Haynes RB, Hedges Team. Optimal search strategies for retrieving systematic reviews from Medline: analytical survey. BMJ. 2005;330(7482):68.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

14.

Breiman L. Random forests. Mach Learn. 2001;45(1):5–32.CrossRef

15.

Epistemonikos Foundation. Collaboratron™[Software]. https://collaboratron.epistelab.com.

16.

Page MJ, Shamseer L, Altman DG, Tetzlaff J, Sampson M, Tricco AC, et al. Epidemiology and reporting characteristics of systematic reviews of biomedical research: a cross-sectional study. PLoS Med. 2016;13(5):e1002028. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002028.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

17.

TRIP database. [accessed 27 Jan, 2020] Available from: https://www.tripdatabase.com/.

18.

PubMed Health to be discontinued October 31, 2018; content will continue to be available at NLM. [accessed 27 January, 2020] Available from: https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2018/07/31/pubmed-health-discontinued-october-2018-nlm/.

19.

National Library of Medicine. Support for systematic reviews. NLM Tech Bull. 2019;(427):b6.

20.

Bravo-Soto GA, Schulze CE, Morel-Marambio M, Lobos-Urbina D, Vergara C, Verdugo-Paiva F, et al. How comprehensive is Epistemonikos Database to identify systematic reviews in health: a methodological study. Santiago: Cochrane 26th Cochrane Colloquium (virtual); 2019.

21.

Araya V, Kraemer P, Burdiles P, Herrera P, Castillo C, Sepulveda D, et al. The Living Overview of Evidence database (LOVE) may be more efficient than a traditional search of systematic reviews and randomized trials. Santiago: Cochrane 26th Cochrane Colloquium (virtual); 2019.

22.

Page MJ, Moher D. Mass production of systematic reviews and meta-analyses: an exercise in mega-silliness? Milbank Q. 2016;94(3):515–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12211.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

23.

Lavis JN, Oxman AD, Grimshaw J, Johansen M, Boyko JA, Lewin S, et al. SUPPORT Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking (STP) 7: Finding systematic reviews. Health Res Policy Syst. 2009;7(Suppl 1):S7. https://doi.org/10.1186/1478-4505-7-S1-S7.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

24.

Guyatt G, Oxman AD, Akl EA, Kunz R, Vist G, Brozek J, et al. GRADE guidelines: 1. Introduction-GRADE evidence profiles and summary of findings tables. J Clin Epidemiol. 2011;64(4):383–94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2010.04.026.CrossRefPubMed

25.

Jeffery R, Navarro T, Lokker C, Haynes RB, Wilczynski NL, Farjou G. How current are leading evidence-based medical textbooks? An analytic survey of four online textbooks. J Med Internet Res. 2012;14(6):e175. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.2105.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

26.

Chalmers I, Bracken MB, Djulbegovic B, Garattini S, Grant J, Gülmezoglu AM, et al. How to increase value and reduce waste when research priorities are set. Lancet. 2014;383(9912):156–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62229-1.CrossRefPubMed

27.

Shojania KG, Sampson M, Ansari MT, Ji J, Doucette S, Moher D. How quickly do systematic reviews go out of date? A survival analysis. Ann Intern Med. 2007;147(4):224–33.CrossRefPubMed

28.

Beller EM, Chen JK, Wang UL, Glasziou PP. Are systematic reviews up-to-date at the time of publication? Syst Rev. 2013;2:36.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

29.

Siontis KC, Hernandez-Boussard T, Ioannidis JP. Overlapping meta-analyses on the same topic: survey of published studies. BMJ. 2013;347:f4501. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f4501.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

30.

Iqbal SA, Wallach JD, Khoury MJ, Schully SD, Ioannidis JP. Reproducible research practices and transparency across the biomedical literature. PLoS Biol. 2016;14(1):e1002333. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1002333.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

31.

Gurevitch J, Koricheva J, Nakagawa S, Stewart G. Meta-analysis and the science of research synthesis. Nature. 2018;555(7695):175–82. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25753.CrossRefPubMed

32.

Tugwell P, Welch VA, Karunananthan S, Maxwell LJ, Akl EA, Avey MT et al. When to replicate systematic reviews of interventions: consensus checklist. BMJ. 2020;370:m2864.

33.

Elliott JH, Turner T, Clavisi O, Thomas J, Higgins JP, Mavergames C, et al. Living systematic reviews: an emerging opportunity to narrow the evidence-practice gap. PLoS Med. 2014;11(2):e1001603. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001603.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Title: Epistemonikos: a comprehensive database of systematic reviews for health decision-making
Authors: Gabriel Rada
Daniel Pérez
Felipe Araya-Quintanilla
Camila Ávila
Gonzalo Bravo-Soto
Rocío Bravo-Jeria
Aldo Cánepa
Daniel Capurro
Victoria Castro-Gutiérrez
Valeria Contreras
Javiera Edwards
Jorge Faúndez
Damián Garrido
Magdalena Jiménez
Valentina Llovet
Diego Lobos
Francisco Madrid
Macarena Morel-Marambio
Antonia Mendoza
Ignacio Neumann
Luis Ortiz-Muñoz
José Peña
Marcelo Pérez
Franco Pesce
Carmen Rain
Solange Rivera
Javiera Sepúlveda
Mauricio Soto
Felipe Valverde
Juan Vásquez
Francisca Verdugo-Paiva
Camilo Vergara
Cynthia Zavala
Ricardo Zilleruelo-Ramos
on behalf of Epistemonikos project
Publication date: 01-12-2020
Publisher: BioMed Central
Published in: BMC Medical Research Methodology / Issue 1/2020
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2288
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-020-01157-x

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

Springer Medicine

Epistemonikos: a comprehensive database of systematic reviews for health decision-making

Abstract

Background

Methods and findings

Conclusions

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

Springer Medicine

Abstract

Background

Methods and findings

Conclusions

Please log in to get access to this content

Other articles of this Issue 1/2020

A Bayesian natural cubic B-spline varying coefficient method for non-ignorable dropout

Study design factors influencing patients’ willingness to participate in clinical research: a randomised vignette-based study

Modeling observations with a detection limit using a truncated normal distribution with censoring

Clustering of continuous and binary outcomes at the general practice level in individually randomised studies in primary care - a review of 10 years of primary care trials

Best practices for collecting repeated measures data using text messages

Development, testing and use of data extraction forms in systematic reviews: a review of methodological guidance