Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: systematic reviews are time- and resource-intensive, requiring approximately one year from protocol registration to submission for publication.
Objectives: to identify processes, barriers and enablers to decreasing the time required to complete a full systematic review to under two weeks.
Methods: we completed a systematic review of evidence for an intervention question, by integrating Systematic Review Automation (SRA) tools with the expertise of four experienced systematic reviewers (two research clinicians, an information specialist, and an epidemiologist). We recorded the time spent on each step of a systematic review and identified barriers and facilitators. The former were analysed qualitatively; the latter quantitatively. The final outcomes were: a completed systematic review of sufficiently high quality to circulate to all authors for feedback, and the feedback of peer reviewers on the submitted manuscript.
Results: Sixty person-hours across 8 ½ work days (12 calendar days) were required to complete a moderately sized systematic review (1381 articles screened, 8 included studies). Barriers and facilitators fell into the following categories: knowledge of the personnel, time, environmental factors, software/infrastructure, and other. Among the key barriers were: websites being unavailable, deviating from normal processes (e.g. skipping the standard check of agreement after screening a small number of articles), a lack of content-specific knowledge (e.g. drug names) and environmental disruptions (e.g. sound from construction work). Key facilitators were: advanced knowledge and expertise of the personnel in systematic review methodology, existing familiarity with the SRA tools and their capabilities, blocking off time to focus on this project specifically, the real-time availability of clinical and methodological expertise, and rapid response time from authors of included studies. The review is currently under peer review; peer reviewers’ comments will be added once available to provide a narrative indicator of the quality of the review.
Conclusions: a small and experienced systematic review team using SRA tools can complete a moderately-sized full systematic review in under two work weeks.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: there was no direct patient or consumer involvement, although the ability to quickly synthesize evidence on medical topics will be of direct benefit to both these groups.
Objectives: to identify processes, barriers and enablers to decreasing the time required to complete a full systematic review to under two weeks.
Methods: we completed a systematic review of evidence for an intervention question, by integrating Systematic Review Automation (SRA) tools with the expertise of four experienced systematic reviewers (two research clinicians, an information specialist, and an epidemiologist). We recorded the time spent on each step of a systematic review and identified barriers and facilitators. The former were analysed qualitatively; the latter quantitatively. The final outcomes were: a completed systematic review of sufficiently high quality to circulate to all authors for feedback, and the feedback of peer reviewers on the submitted manuscript.
Results: Sixty person-hours across 8 ½ work days (12 calendar days) were required to complete a moderately sized systematic review (1381 articles screened, 8 included studies). Barriers and facilitators fell into the following categories: knowledge of the personnel, time, environmental factors, software/infrastructure, and other. Among the key barriers were: websites being unavailable, deviating from normal processes (e.g. skipping the standard check of agreement after screening a small number of articles), a lack of content-specific knowledge (e.g. drug names) and environmental disruptions (e.g. sound from construction work). Key facilitators were: advanced knowledge and expertise of the personnel in systematic review methodology, existing familiarity with the SRA tools and their capabilities, blocking off time to focus on this project specifically, the real-time availability of clinical and methodological expertise, and rapid response time from authors of included studies. The review is currently under peer review; peer reviewers’ comments will be added once available to provide a narrative indicator of the quality of the review.
Conclusions: a small and experienced systematic review team using SRA tools can complete a moderately-sized full systematic review in under two work weeks.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: there was no direct patient or consumer involvement, although the ability to quickly synthesize evidence on medical topics will be of direct benefit to both these groups.