Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: systematic reviews (SRs) are necessary for evidence-based health decision making, but reports of SRs are often too voluminous to be useful for decision makers. This problem can be solved through a platform that interactively displays key summary data from SRs, with the option to dig deeper into the evidence as needed. The Systematic Review Data Repository (SRDR), developed by our team in 2012, is a widely-used, free, online, open-source system for extracting, managing, and archiving study data gathered during SRs. To make summaries of SR data more readily accessible to decision makers digitally and interactively, we are developing a new free platform 'SRDR 2.0'.
Objectives: to describe the development of SRDR 2.0 and to demonstrate its use.
Methods: we have developed SRDR 2.0 as a platform that provides the structured information (made up of 'structured elements') of greatest interest to stakeholders. We followed three steps:
1) identifying potential structured elements from common items reported in 10 published SRs;
2) finalizing the list of structured elements through iterative discussions with 21 international academic and non-academic stakeholders with diverse perspectives; and
3) building and refining a prototype for SRDR 2.0.
Results: we identified 68 potential structured elements (Step 1), from which we finalized 44 elements (Step 2). We organized the structured elements into three levels: Level 1 (meta-data and other information related to the entire SR); Level 2 (related to specific populations, interventions/exposures, comparators, outcomes, study designs, and settings of interest); and Level 3 (related to results for specific outcomes). By applying various filtering options (e.g. participant age or sex, intervention dose, outcomes), the user can visualize relevant desired information. As illustrated in Figure 1, SRDR 2.0 gathers information from three different types of sources – the SR report (i.e. publication), SRDR (i.e. online data system), and various external online locations. SRDR 2.0 displays the requested information through interactive, user-friendly formats, such as accordion-style headings, where the user clicks on headings to reveal underlying information, and mouse-overs, where underlying information is revealed only when the user hovers the mouse over a heading (see Figure 2).
Conclusions: SRDR 2.0 aims to be a new platform for sharing summary SR data digitally and interactively with diverse end users, such as guideline developers, clinical decision support tool developers, clinicians, patients, and other consumers. At the Colloquium, we will demonstrate live the use of SRDR 2.0. By helping present the relevant information from various types of SRs to decision makers, SRDR 2.0 has the potential to greatly facilitate evidence-based decision making.
Patient or consumer involvement: we involved a consumer representative among the stakeholders who helped define the structured elements.
Objectives: to describe the development of SRDR 2.0 and to demonstrate its use.
Methods: we have developed SRDR 2.0 as a platform that provides the structured information (made up of 'structured elements') of greatest interest to stakeholders. We followed three steps:
1) identifying potential structured elements from common items reported in 10 published SRs;
2) finalizing the list of structured elements through iterative discussions with 21 international academic and non-academic stakeholders with diverse perspectives; and
3) building and refining a prototype for SRDR 2.0.
Results: we identified 68 potential structured elements (Step 1), from which we finalized 44 elements (Step 2). We organized the structured elements into three levels: Level 1 (meta-data and other information related to the entire SR); Level 2 (related to specific populations, interventions/exposures, comparators, outcomes, study designs, and settings of interest); and Level 3 (related to results for specific outcomes). By applying various filtering options (e.g. participant age or sex, intervention dose, outcomes), the user can visualize relevant desired information. As illustrated in Figure 1, SRDR 2.0 gathers information from three different types of sources – the SR report (i.e. publication), SRDR (i.e. online data system), and various external online locations. SRDR 2.0 displays the requested information through interactive, user-friendly formats, such as accordion-style headings, where the user clicks on headings to reveal underlying information, and mouse-overs, where underlying information is revealed only when the user hovers the mouse over a heading (see Figure 2).
Conclusions: SRDR 2.0 aims to be a new platform for sharing summary SR data digitally and interactively with diverse end users, such as guideline developers, clinical decision support tool developers, clinicians, patients, and other consumers. At the Colloquium, we will demonstrate live the use of SRDR 2.0. By helping present the relevant information from various types of SRs to decision makers, SRDR 2.0 has the potential to greatly facilitate evidence-based decision making.
Patient or consumer involvement: we involved a consumer representative among the stakeholders who helped define the structured elements.