Article type
Year
Abstract
Background:
The Indian Council of Medical Research has promoted Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) in India by funding an Advanced Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (2007-2011) that hosted the South Asian Cochrane Network & Centre at the Christian Medical College Vellore; procuring a national subscription to The Cochrane Library (since 2007), and establishing the Advance Centre for Evidence-Based Child Health at the Post Graduate Institute Chandigarh (2011). There have also been other EBM training initiatives in the country.
While the number of Cochrane systematic reviews (protocols and full reviews) with Indian authors has increased from 11 in 2005 to 272 in February 2014, and there are increasing numbers of articles indexed as ‘systematic reviews’ with Indian authors in PubMed (1437 over the last 10 years to end March 2014); it is unclear whether Indian medical journals have also seen an increase in EBM-related publications.
Objectives:
To assess effect of EBM training on publications in Indian medical journals.
Methods:
We surveyed all issues of 62 online Indian medical journals accessed via the medIND portal of IndMED (a bibliographic database) for systematic reviews or meta-analyses published during 2000-2013. To be considered for inclusion, these articles had to have explicit search strategies of multiple databases and to have used standard methods for data synthesis.
Results:
Of the 62 Indian journals surveyed, nine had publications listed as systematic reviews/meta-analysis published between 2006 and 2013. Of these, 32 were considered to be systematic reviews. The Indian Journal of Conservative Dentistry, The Indian Journal of Medical Research, Indian Pediatrics, and Lung India, had published more than one systematic review, while Indian Pediatrics had published 18.
Conclusions:
Efforts to promote EBM in India have seen an increasing number of systematic reviews published in Indian medical journals, but these are relatively few in number and driven by a limited number of authors and institutions. Integrating EBM in the undergraduate and post-graduate medical curricula may help in better promotion of EBM in India.
The Indian Council of Medical Research has promoted Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) in India by funding an Advanced Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (2007-2011) that hosted the South Asian Cochrane Network & Centre at the Christian Medical College Vellore; procuring a national subscription to The Cochrane Library (since 2007), and establishing the Advance Centre for Evidence-Based Child Health at the Post Graduate Institute Chandigarh (2011). There have also been other EBM training initiatives in the country.
While the number of Cochrane systematic reviews (protocols and full reviews) with Indian authors has increased from 11 in 2005 to 272 in February 2014, and there are increasing numbers of articles indexed as ‘systematic reviews’ with Indian authors in PubMed (1437 over the last 10 years to end March 2014); it is unclear whether Indian medical journals have also seen an increase in EBM-related publications.
Objectives:
To assess effect of EBM training on publications in Indian medical journals.
Methods:
We surveyed all issues of 62 online Indian medical journals accessed via the medIND portal of IndMED (a bibliographic database) for systematic reviews or meta-analyses published during 2000-2013. To be considered for inclusion, these articles had to have explicit search strategies of multiple databases and to have used standard methods for data synthesis.
Results:
Of the 62 Indian journals surveyed, nine had publications listed as systematic reviews/meta-analysis published between 2006 and 2013. Of these, 32 were considered to be systematic reviews. The Indian Journal of Conservative Dentistry, The Indian Journal of Medical Research, Indian Pediatrics, and Lung India, had published more than one systematic review, while Indian Pediatrics had published 18.
Conclusions:
Efforts to promote EBM in India have seen an increasing number of systematic reviews published in Indian medical journals, but these are relatively few in number and driven by a limited number of authors and institutions. Integrating EBM in the undergraduate and post-graduate medical curricula may help in better promotion of EBM in India.