Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Quality Standards are concise sets of prioritised statements designed to drive measurable quality improvements within a particular area of health or care in the United Kingdom (UK). A central aim of Quality Standards is to reduce variations in practice in care that arise from non-adherence to guidance, and which result in poor quality care.
In 2012, to support the development of Quality Standards, information specialists within the guidance Information Services (gIS) team at NICE developed a search filter to identify literature on variations in practice from bibliographic databases including MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and the Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC). Having used the filter over a period of time, systematic reviewers from the Quality Standards team reported that a large number of irrelevant references were being retrieved by the filter. In response, the information specialists undertook a project to increase the precision of the filter. The revised filter was then piloted for a period of eight months until March 2015.
Objectives: To improve the precision of the ‘variations in practice’ search filter without excluding key papers.
Methods:
1. Analysis undertaken of the irrelevant results from previous searches to identify which aspects of the filter could be modified.
2. Modification of the filter, and assessment of its performance in retrieving key papers that had informed previous Quality Standards topics.
3. Piloting the revised filter on new Quality Standards topics to assess its ability to retrieve key papers and reduce the volume of irrelevant references.
Results: Precision has been improved: the number of irrelevant references retrieved has been reduced to an acceptable level.
Conclusions: Information overload through retrieval of irrelevant references has been reduced, saving the sifting time of systematic reviewers. The modified filter has proved to be robust in identifying key papers and will be used for all forthcoming Quality Standards variations in practice searches.
In 2012, to support the development of Quality Standards, information specialists within the guidance Information Services (gIS) team at NICE developed a search filter to identify literature on variations in practice from bibliographic databases including MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and the Health Management Information Consortium (HMIC). Having used the filter over a period of time, systematic reviewers from the Quality Standards team reported that a large number of irrelevant references were being retrieved by the filter. In response, the information specialists undertook a project to increase the precision of the filter. The revised filter was then piloted for a period of eight months until March 2015.
Objectives: To improve the precision of the ‘variations in practice’ search filter without excluding key papers.
Methods:
1. Analysis undertaken of the irrelevant results from previous searches to identify which aspects of the filter could be modified.
2. Modification of the filter, and assessment of its performance in retrieving key papers that had informed previous Quality Standards topics.
3. Piloting the revised filter on new Quality Standards topics to assess its ability to retrieve key papers and reduce the volume of irrelevant references.
Results: Precision has been improved: the number of irrelevant references retrieved has been reduced to an acceptable level.
Conclusions: Information overload through retrieval of irrelevant references has been reduced, saving the sifting time of systematic reviewers. The modified filter has proved to be robust in identifying key papers and will be used for all forthcoming Quality Standards variations in practice searches.