Background: Independent medical evaluations (IMEs) are used by insurers, employers, and the courts to acquire an unbiased opinion on patient s medical condition; however, these commonly used assessments are often criticized for a lack of impartiality and limited standardization. Objective: A systematic review of all literature on IMEs. Methods: A comprehensive search of 5 electronic databases, without time or language restrictions, revealed 88 eligible unique citations; 74 were narrative reviews, editorials, case reports or letters to the Editor. Two reviewers developed a coding system to categorize themes in eligible articles, coded all articles independently and in duplicate, and compiled a transcript with all passages per theme across reviews for qualitative analysis (details in Kunz, Guyatt, Busse (2). Results: Narrative review characteristics. Most reviews were authored in North America (67/74=90%) and few articles were published prior to 1990 (7%) or between 1990 1995 (8%). A steep increase occurred thereafter: 1995-1999: 30%; 2000-2004: 28%; 2004 to October 2008: 24%. Authors declared affiliations with universities (46%); hospitals (15%); a company that arranged IMEs (8%); insurance companies (9%); and legal firms (7%), 19% reported no affiliation. Eight percent of authors were in private practice. Most articles (40%) addressed general IME issues, assessment of musculoskeletal disease (26%) or mental health assessment (23%). Reviews focussed on workers compensation (28%); legal/forensic issues (26%); the insurance perspective (13%); return-to-work-issues (12%) or were professional self-reflections (18%). Reviews were targeted towards 5 groups: clinicians/family physicians (26%); mental health professionals (22%); medico-legal professionals (18%); professionals engaged in musculoskeletal assessments (16%) and; IME professionals in general (12%). Project status: We have coded 75% of articles and will report the results of our qualitative analysis at the colloquium.