WHICH DATABASES SHOULD BE USED TO IDENTIFY STUDIES FOR SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS OF ECONOMIC EVALUATIONS?

Which resources should be used to identify RCT/CCTs for systematic reviews: a systematic review

BACKGROUND Systematic reviewers seek to comprehensively search for relevant studies and summarize these to present the most valid estimate of intervention effectiveness. The more resources searched, the higher the yield, and thus time and costs required to conduct a systematic review. While there is an abundance of evidence to suggest how extensive a search for randomized controlled trials (RCT...

Should FCE be used to identify validity of effort?

Schapmire and colleagues have recently reported a study on ‘consistency of effort’ in this journal [9]. They conclude that pain does not reasonably explain the failure of a statistically based validity criteria for detecting sincerity of effort and that their protocol is appropriate for use in a client population. There are, however, some serious concerns surrounding this paper that we wish to ...

Which treatment option should be used?

Which Graphical Approaches should be Used to Represent Medical Knowledge?

Medical knowledge is growing both in quantity and complexity. Although sources of medical knowledge have been digitalized, the way the knowledge they contain is presented to users has not changed and is still highly text-based. However, it has been shown that this information could be presented more efficiently using graphical approaches, such as graphical languages and information visualizatio...

Telemedicine: A systematic review of economic evaluations

Background: Telemedicine is an expanded term in health information technology that comprises procedures for transmitting medical information electronically to improve patients’ health status. The objective of this research is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of telemedicine interventions in various specialty areas.    Methods: The Cochrane Library and Centre for Review and Di...