HSR Information Central

Evidence-Based Practice and Health Technology Assessment

Evidence-Based Practice (Domestic)

• ACP Journal Club - (American College of Physicians (ACP) USA)  - This Web site comprises a 10-year archive (from 2000 to the present) of the cumulative electronic contents of ACP Journal Club, with recurrent weeding of out-of-date articles. The content is carefully selected from over 100 clinical journals through reliable application of explicit criteria for scientific merit, followed by assessment of relevance to medical practice by clinical specialists.

• AHRQ Effective Healthcare - (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ))  - The Effective Health Care Program is dedicated to facilitating decision making by providing findings from high-quality research in formats for different audiences.

• Cancer Care Outcomes Research & Surveillance Consortium - (National Cancer Institute, NIH (NCI))  - Supports prospective cohort studies on 10,000 patients with newly diagnosed lung or colorectal cancers recruited in geographically diverse populations and health care systems.

• Cancer Control and Population Sciences Research Findings - (National Cancer Institute, NIH (NCI))  - Includes evidence reviews funded by NCI and AHRQ factsheets from health promotion research.

• Cancer Quality of Care Measures Project - (National Cancer Institute, NIH (NCI))  - In this project, NCI is collaborating with other agencies and organizations to identify evidence-based quality measures for diagnosing and treating certain major types of cancer

• Cochrane Collaboration - Improving healthcare decision-making globally, through systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare interventions.

• Effective Health Care Glossary - (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ))  - Developed to support the AHRQ Effective Health Care program.

• Evidence-Based Health Policy Project - (University of Wisconsin)  - This Wisconsin project includes four methods by which to provide public and private sector policy makers with timely, non-partisan, high quality information for evidence-based decision-making.

• Glossary of Health Care Quality Terms - (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF))  - A glossary of key terms in the fields of health care quality, disparities reduction and quality improvement.

• InterMed - A joint project of researchers at Harvard Medical School, Stanford University School of Medicine, Columbia University, and the American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine working toward a representation for sharable guidelines.

• National Guideline Clearinghouse™ (NGC) - (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ))  - Resources for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.

• National Quality Forum (NQF) - Not-for-profit membership organization created to develop and implement a national strategy for health care quality measurement and reporting.

• Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) - (Health Services Research and Development Service, Veterans Administration (HSR&D))  - Works to improve the quality of healthcare for veterans by implementing research findings into routine clinical practice. The QUERI centers focus on nine high-risk and/or highly prevalent diseases or conditions among veterans.

• Quality of Cancer Care - (National Cancer Institute, NIH (NCI))  - Describes NCI's areas of research in qualty of care and the initiatives being carried out in order to enhance the state of the science on the quality of cancer care and inform federal and private-sector decision making on care delivery, coverage, regulation, and standard setting.

• RAND COMPARE - COMPARE is a transparent, evidence-based approach to providing information and tools to help policymakers, the media, and other interested parties understand, design, and evaluate health policies.

• Why Not the Best? - (Commonwealth Fund)  - Free resource for health care professionals interested in tracking performance on various measures of health care quality. It enables organizations to compare their performance against that of peer organizations, against a range of benchmarks, and over time.

• World Wide Web-based EBM Hedges - (Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM))  - Links to evidence-based medicine websites.

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Evidence-Based Practice (International)

• AHFMR Publications - (Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (AHFMR))  - Provides a list of publications from AHFMR including its Health Technology Assessment group. Of special interest is the latest version of the Health technology assessment on the Net: a guide to Internet sources of information.

• Bandolier - (Pain Research Group UK)  - The first issue of Bandolier, an independent journal about evidence-based healthcare, written by Oxford scientists, (RAM AND HJM) was printed in February 1994. It has appeared monthly ever since and has become the premier source of evidence based healthcare information in the UK and worldwide for both healthcare professionals and consumers.

• Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health - National body that provides Canada's federal, provincial and territorial health care decision makers with credible, impartial advice and evidence-based information about the effectiveness and efficiency of drugs and other health technologies. It was formerly known as the Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment (CCOHTA)

• Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine - Aims to develop, teach and promote evidence-based health care and provide support and resources to doctors and health care professionals to help maintain the highest standards of medicine.

• Centre for Reviews and Dissemination - Part of the National Institute for Health Research, CRD undertakes high quality systematic reviews that evaluate the effects of health and social care interventions and the delivery and organisation of health care.

• CMA Infobase - (Canadian Medical Association (CMA) Canada)  - Clinical practice guidelines produced or endorsed in Canada.

• Integrative Approaches to Qualitative and Quantitative Evidence - (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE))  - This 2004 report is an informal review of the literature on integrating qualitative and quantitative forms of evidence. The report seeks to address five related questions: 1. What is the role of qualitative approaches in traditional trials and experimental studies? 2. At what point in the development of a field of knowledge is it appropriate to pull qualitative and quantitative learning together? 3. What constitutes good evidence from qualitative studies? 4. Are there hierarchies of evidence within the different types of qualitative investigation? 5. How may the findings of qualitative and quantitative research be synthesised?

• International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua) - International membership organization including leading quality health care providers and agencies in just under 70 countries. The ISQua Secretariat is located in Australia.

• National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) - Set up as a Special Health Authority for England and Wales on 1 April 1999. It is part of the National Health Service (NHS), and its role is to provide patients, health professionals and the public with authoritative, robust and reliable guidance on current "best practice".

• Netting the Evidence, A ScHARR Introduction to Evidence Based Practice on the Internet - Produced by the School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield. Intended to facilitate evidence-based healthcare by providing support and access to helpful organisations and useful learning resources, such as an evidence-based virtual library, software and journals.

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Health Technology Assessment

• Health Information Research Unit, HIRU, McMaster University - Conducts research in the field of health information science and is dedicated to the generation of new knowledge about the nature of health and clinical information problems, the development of new information resources to support evidence-based health care, and the evaluation of various innovations in overcoming health care information problems.

• Health Technology Assessment International (HTAi) - Focuses uniquely on health technology assessment (HTA) and provides the key forum for all those from the worlds of health care, academia and business interested in the science, development and application of HTA. Health technology assessment (HTA) offers "supporting evidence based decision making in health care policy and practice".

• Health Technology Update - (Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) Canada)  - Produced twice a year, the newsletter presents articles about new and emerging medical drugs, devices, procedures, and health systems to support health care decisions and policy making at the local, regional, provincial, and national levels.

• HTA 101 - Introduction to Health Technology Assessment - Health technology assessment (HTA) is the systematic evaluation of properties, effects or other impacts of health technology. This online e-book explains the 10 basic steps of HTA.

• Medical Technology and Practice Patterns Institute (MTPPI) - A nonprofit organization established in 1986 to conduct research on the clinical, economic, and social implications of new and emerging health care technologies.

• NHS Health Technology Assessment Programme - UK National Coordinating Centre of the Health Technology Assessment (NCCHTA) manages, supports and develops the NHS HTA program funded by the UK Department of Health.

• NZHTA Clearing House - New Zealand Health Technology Assessment (NZHTA) was a clearing house for health outcomes and health technology assessment, operating from 1997-June 2007. NZHTA is no longer active but publications can still be accessed from this site.

• Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care (SBU) - SBU presents the scientific evidence on the benefits, risks, and costs associated with different interventions. SBU identifies methods that offer the greatest benefits and the least risk, focusing on the most efficient ways to allocate healthcare resources. However, SBU also identifies methods currently in use that provide no benefits, have not been assessed, or are not cost effective.

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