Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Rapid reviews have emerged as an efficient approach to synthesizing evidence, within a four to five week timeframe, for informing decision makers in health care settings. It is uncertain whether even very shorter timeframes that are needed sometimes in specific healthcare decisions, e.g. two to three days elaboration-time, would still be adequate for capturing the key evidence that forms part of more elaborate Health Technology Assessment (HTA) documents.
Objectives: To compare the conclusions and analyze the amount and direction of the evidence included in HTA documents produced in an ultra-rapid way compared to the more normal four to eight weeks.
Methods: IECS is an Argentinean HTA agency that produces both of the aforementioned types of documents according to the urgency and needs of decision-makers. The documents are based on focused search strategies in meta-search engines and online biomedical literature databases, to identify systematic reviews, clinical practice guidelines, HTAs, coverage policies, and selected primary research. The ultra-rapid HTAs are prepared by highly-trained staff who select the most important evidence according to their own judgement. The 'slower' HTAs allow a more exhaustive assessment of the evidence.
We selected pair of documents, one done in two days and the other in five weeks, oriented to the same research question. The longer document needed to be published within a year of the shorter one. The additional evidence identified by the newer document, which was compiled at a later date than the ultra-rapid HTA, was excluded and the conclusions modified wherever necessary. Pairs of independent researchers extracted the outcomes, and disagreements were solved by a third researcher.
Results: We selected 32 pairs of documents. The preliminary analysis showed no serious mismatching. The final results will be presented at the Colloquium.
Conclusions: The timeframe to produce evidence is becoming shorter. It is critical to determine if ultra-rapid evidence summaries produced by HTA trained teams are reliable.
Objectives: To compare the conclusions and analyze the amount and direction of the evidence included in HTA documents produced in an ultra-rapid way compared to the more normal four to eight weeks.
Methods: IECS is an Argentinean HTA agency that produces both of the aforementioned types of documents according to the urgency and needs of decision-makers. The documents are based on focused search strategies in meta-search engines and online biomedical literature databases, to identify systematic reviews, clinical practice guidelines, HTAs, coverage policies, and selected primary research. The ultra-rapid HTAs are prepared by highly-trained staff who select the most important evidence according to their own judgement. The 'slower' HTAs allow a more exhaustive assessment of the evidence.
We selected pair of documents, one done in two days and the other in five weeks, oriented to the same research question. The longer document needed to be published within a year of the shorter one. The additional evidence identified by the newer document, which was compiled at a later date than the ultra-rapid HTA, was excluded and the conclusions modified wherever necessary. Pairs of independent researchers extracted the outcomes, and disagreements were solved by a third researcher.
Results: We selected 32 pairs of documents. The preliminary analysis showed no serious mismatching. The final results will be presented at the Colloquium.
Conclusions: The timeframe to produce evidence is becoming shorter. It is critical to determine if ultra-rapid evidence summaries produced by HTA trained teams are reliable.