Epistemonikos: a comprehensive, systematic, collaborative and multilingual database for evidence-based health care

Article type
Authors
Capurro D1, Rada G2, Claro JC3, Neumann I3, Rivera S3, Soto M3
1Evidence Based Health Care Program, Faculty of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile
2Evidence Based Health Care Program Faculty of Medicine, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile
3Evidence-Based Healthcare Program, Pontificia Universidad Catolica, Chile
Abstract
Objectives:

To show what Epistemonikos can do for people looking for evidence in health care, how it can help authors and Cochrane Review Groups, and how it relates to Cochrane initiatives.

Description:

The Epistemonikos project (www.epistemonikos.org) intends to identify evidence in a systematic and comprehensive way. Systematic reviews (SR), overviews and structured summaries of reviews are searched, and information is uploaded into a single database. Primary studies included in SR are also uploaded, independent of the publication or language status. All information is collaboratively classified in one of the above categories, and they are connected (e.g. from a primary study users can go to all SRs that have included it). Using software and a network of collaborators, everything is translated into nine languages, and additional information is added (e.g. data extracted in SR about primary studies). It is possible to search in nine languages, using both intuitive (i.e google-like) and traditional (i.e. boolean) strategies. We will show what Epistemonikos is able to do, and how it can help authors or Cochrane Review Groups to decide upon updating reviews or prioritising new reviews. We will also discuss what is in common between Epistemonikos and Cochrane initiatives, such as translations and CENTRAL.