Article type
Year
Abstract
Background:
Cochrane Airways works with authors (typically healthcare professionals and researchers) to produce systematic reviews on asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchiectasis, sleep apnoea, cough, interstitial and other lung diseases. We have published more than 370 reviews and have over 40 protocols in progress.
Cochrane Airways has always experienced a tension in dealing with the many different topics in our scope. Asthma and COPD affect a lot of people around the world and cost health services a lot of money. We have done priority-setting work in asthma and COPD previously. But the rarer diseases in our scope are very important for the people living with them and those that care for them, and deserve to be prioritised. While we would like to have enough time to prioritise each section of our scope in detail, it is not practical with our current resources, hence our decision to conduct a “whole-of-scope” prioritisation exercise. We also wanted to make our process more transparent and bring in stakeholder voices.
Methods:
We convened a group of stakeholders, the Cochrane Airways Priority-Setting Group (CAPSG), to prioritise research questions that will be developed into a series of Cochrane Reviews. We planned to generate research questions in two ways: 1) a one-off survey in 2019; and 2) a rolling priority setting process.
We posted and promoted a survey on social media and by email to ask patients, carers, researchers and healthcare professionals for their most important questions about respiratory health. We called the survey “your lungs, your questions”.
Results:
We received 147 responses to the survey. We cleaned up the responses by removing the uncertainties that were unclear, splitting some longer answers into separate uncertainties and redrafting some for clarity. This resulted in 100 unique uncertainties.
The CAPSG comprised of 12 people including people living with a chronic lung disease, researchers and health professionals. The CAPSG attended three online meetings and ranked the 100 uncertainties in two rounds. The final outcome was a ranked list of 12 uncertainties covering a range of airways diseases.
Future work:
We will carry out further scoping work to develop the uncertainties into questions suitable for Cochrane Reviews.
Through the rolling priority-setting program we aim to select priority Cochrane updates and reviews from ongoing work such as literature surveillance, the most highly cited or accessed reviews, reviews identified by guideline groups and review proposals submitted by prospective Cochrane authors. We expect to be able to present the first round of this project at the 2020 Cochrane Colloquium.
Public involvement:
Sixty eight per cent of respondents to the survey identified primarily as a patient and 21% identified as a carer. Two members of the CAPSG identified as patients, one as both a family member and researcher, and at least one of the researchers live with a respiratory condition.
Cochrane Airways works with authors (typically healthcare professionals and researchers) to produce systematic reviews on asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchiectasis, sleep apnoea, cough, interstitial and other lung diseases. We have published more than 370 reviews and have over 40 protocols in progress.
Cochrane Airways has always experienced a tension in dealing with the many different topics in our scope. Asthma and COPD affect a lot of people around the world and cost health services a lot of money. We have done priority-setting work in asthma and COPD previously. But the rarer diseases in our scope are very important for the people living with them and those that care for them, and deserve to be prioritised. While we would like to have enough time to prioritise each section of our scope in detail, it is not practical with our current resources, hence our decision to conduct a “whole-of-scope” prioritisation exercise. We also wanted to make our process more transparent and bring in stakeholder voices.
Methods:
We convened a group of stakeholders, the Cochrane Airways Priority-Setting Group (CAPSG), to prioritise research questions that will be developed into a series of Cochrane Reviews. We planned to generate research questions in two ways: 1) a one-off survey in 2019; and 2) a rolling priority setting process.
We posted and promoted a survey on social media and by email to ask patients, carers, researchers and healthcare professionals for their most important questions about respiratory health. We called the survey “your lungs, your questions”.
Results:
We received 147 responses to the survey. We cleaned up the responses by removing the uncertainties that were unclear, splitting some longer answers into separate uncertainties and redrafting some for clarity. This resulted in 100 unique uncertainties.
The CAPSG comprised of 12 people including people living with a chronic lung disease, researchers and health professionals. The CAPSG attended three online meetings and ranked the 100 uncertainties in two rounds. The final outcome was a ranked list of 12 uncertainties covering a range of airways diseases.
Future work:
We will carry out further scoping work to develop the uncertainties into questions suitable for Cochrane Reviews.
Through the rolling priority-setting program we aim to select priority Cochrane updates and reviews from ongoing work such as literature surveillance, the most highly cited or accessed reviews, reviews identified by guideline groups and review proposals submitted by prospective Cochrane authors. We expect to be able to present the first round of this project at the 2020 Cochrane Colloquium.
Public involvement:
Sixty eight per cent of respondents to the survey identified primarily as a patient and 21% identified as a carer. Two members of the CAPSG identified as patients, one as both a family member and researcher, and at least one of the researchers live with a respiratory condition.