Learn how to use the Epistemonikos database, the world’s largest multilingual repository of healthcare evidence. The second in a series of three blogs.
Discover more about the ‘Living OVerview of Evidence’ platform from Epistemonikos, which maps the best evidence relevant for making health decisions. The final blog in a series of three focusing on the Epistemonikos Foundation.
In this blog, Hebatullah has summarised some key aspects of a resource in our Library – a recording of a webinar on ‘Making health decisions’, run by Cochrane UK in October 2022.
Learn why effective risk communication in public health matters and where you can get started in learning how to better communicate research evidence.
This blog is a review of a newly published book, which has the overall aim of giving health professionals a ‘working understanding’ of medical statistics.
This new webpage from Cochrane UK is aimed at students of all ages. What is evidence-based practice? What is ‘best available research evidence’? Which resources will help you understand evidence and evidence-based practice, and search for evidence?
This page provides a brief introduction to Cochrane and highlights some of the Cochrane platforms you can participate in, connect with, and learn from. Participate in Cochrane’s mission to produce and promote trusted health evidence.
Yousif examines the HIP ATTACK trial, appraises the primary composite endpoint, verifies the assessment and then thinks of ways to interpret the result.
Our library features links to a range of resources that can help you get to grips with various aspects of evidence-based healthcare. From statistics tutorials to guidance on how to critically appraise a paper. This page is continually updated, so do let us know if you know of resources that are missing.
Explaining basic knowledge of statistics with fun visualization tools and interactive functions.
Emily spent some time with the Cochrane Common Mental Disorders group and as part of her learning, she used the Cochrane Interactive Learning modules. In this blog she provides a summary of what she learnt from these modules.
The Catalogue of Bias (CoB), is a digital resource for clinicians, students, researchers, investigators, and consumers of health evidence. As of posting this blog, the catalogue has 49 published biases.
Critical appraisal tools (CATs) are commonly used by students and researchers alike, as a way of judging a study’s quality. In this blog, Dennis Neuen addresses the need to appraise these tools and has also collated a list of 12 CATs from all over the world.
In this blog, Saul Crandon provides the key points to consider, advantages, disadvantages, and further details regarding intercalated degrees.
This blog is an informal review of the resource ‘Teach Yourself Cochrane’.
This blog is an informal review of the resource: ‘Taking account of the play of chance’, outlining the key points of a chapter from the Testing Treatments book.
This blog is an informal review of the following resource: Informed Health Choices Podcast: ‘Benefits and harms’.
Our library of evidence-based nursing resources features links to a range of resources that can help student nurses get to grips with various aspects of evidence-based practice. This page is continually updated, so do let us know if you know of resources that are missing.
Advances in technology now allow huge amounts of data to be handled simultaneously. Katherine takes a look at how this can be used in healthcare and how it can be exploited.
Heidi reviews ‘Systematic Reviews in Health Care: A Practical Guide’ written by Paul Glasziou, Les Irwig, Chris Bain and Graham Colditz
Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics is one of the few easily digestible statistics books that teaches anyone the most basic principles and concepts how to question and see the reality behind health news, hype, claims and ads.
Angel Wong introduces the Cochrane Textbook of Neurology, an on-line library for Cochrane systematic reviews on neurology and neurosurgery.
In the third in our series of articles reviewing the health evidence tools produced by McMaster University, Mathura Mahendren looks at Health Systems Evidence, an information resource for people interested in public health policy.
In the second in our series of articles reviewing the health evidence tools produced by McMaster University, Harkanwal Randhawa examines Health Evidence™, a database of systematic reviews around the subject of public health.
In the first in our series of articles reviewing the health evidence tools produced by McMaster University, Mathura Mahendren gets to know the Optimum Aging Portal, a resource for communicating evidence-based ways of staying healthy in older age.
Sense About Science explains how scientists cope with uncertainty and unknowns in research, whether or not that matters, and how we can practically use scientific results in spite of not always knowing everything.
YouTube video series by Dr. Aaron Carroll called Healthcare Triage, where his motto is, “To the Research!”
In his book, A Scientist in Wonderland, Edzard Ernst describes his life and career. He becomes a pioneer in researching alternative medicine, and as one would expect, makes plenty of enemies along the way.
Infographics are quick, fun ways to introduce a topic or interest people in new subjects. ‘How Disease Spreads’ is an interesting infographic about the prevalence of different diseases across the world and throughout time, but it gets a little lost upon the way.
In his new book, Dr. Goldacre continues his crusade of exposing quacks and pseudoscience, with an emphasis on how journalists totally mislead the public about what a scientific paper really says. He also chronicles his AllTrials quest by railing against the lack of transparency in clinical trials and publication bias.
Dannky Minkow describes a new initiative aimed at getting health care professionals to take another look at their use of non evidence-based and wasteful practices.
University can be tough. Ashline gives some useful tips for getting back into uni and coping to the end of the year!
Next time you visit your doctor you may find that they’re relying on Wikipedia. I went to India to find out why this isn’t as scary as you might think, and how much everyone’s favourite free encyclopaedia is revolutionising the world of medicine.
I did it. I’ve been inducted. Ascended to a higher plain of existence. Yes, that’s right: I am now a Wikipedia editor. And it actually wasn’t that hard.
Here are 10 of the multiple available health apps to improve your efficiency in clinical practice and research. Most of them are free, enjoy…
Ready to get involved with editing Wikipedia? Read Ammar’s guide.
In search of a book with simple, comprehensible definitions and examples of clinical evidence? Do you want to take the first step in understanding common terms in clinical evidence as well as commonly used methods and their pitfalls? This review will inform you if this is the book you’re looking for.
Is this your first contact with evidence-based healthcare? This course is a perfect start…
Ashline takes a look at ethical assessments and considerations in randomised controlled trials and cluster randomised controlled trials.
Sean reviews the Statistics Learning Centre’s Videos – a Youtube channel featuring a series of free tutorials which aim to help you learn the concepts of statistics from identifying types of data to performing t-tests in Excel.
Have you been asked to present some slides on an evidence-based topic? This blog can help!
Kyungmin’s second prize entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence on prostate cancer screening.
Jamie’s third prize winning entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence.
Hala’s third prize winning entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi looking at the latest Cochrane evidence.
Anwen’s first prize entry to the Cochrane UK & Ireland Annual Symposium 2014 – Student Competition. A Prezi explaining the latest Cochrane evidence on routine scale & polish for adults.
Danny has reviewed Testing Treatments Interactive, a website to help you understand more about fair tests and research.
Sean reviews The Geek Manifesto by Mark Henderson, a book that asks what governments can learn from the success of Evidence-Based Medicine, how we can improve the public understanding of science and how we can entrench scientific thinking into other aspects of public life.
With this scheme, NICE are aiming to improve the use of evidence by future healthcare professionals by training students to teach their peers how to find the most trustworthy, up to date information.
Danny reviews the book Testing Treatments that aims to help everyone understand fair tests, how to ask questions and understand research.
Danny has reviewed the US Cochrane Center’s online course that aims to help you understand the basics of evidence-based healthcare and why it’s important.
Sense about Science have a long-standing campaign encouraging people to #AskForEvidence and in their new Healthy Evidence forum, in partnership with NHS Choices, they ask patients and the general public to get involved!
Ammar takes a detailed look at CEBM’s evidence-based resources!
The universities of Duke and North Carolina have collaborated to produce a very thorough tutorial perfect for anyone new to evidence-based practice.
Writing and publishing a health paper? We all know that it´s not so easy. If you have ever wished to find some tools and guides, this is for you!
GATE (Graphic Approach To Evidence Based Medicine) is a simplified diagram that is used to explain any quantitative study; from an RCT to a cohort.
Please have a look at this inspiring video about changing education paradigms. What do you think of it?
The second set of plenary talks included topics relevant to students, such as evidence-based medical education.
Videos of the plenary talks from the recent Cochrane colloquium are available online. Alice has had a look at some of the key points raised in the first session.
If you are new to EBM and methods such as critical appraisal, it can be daunting, but the CEBM tools are a useful introduction for beginners.
PubMed Health – a good place to start your search for health-based evidence
Faculty of 1000 just announced that their subsite – F1000Trials – is finished with the beta-testing. Let’s check it out!
Evidence Aid provides brief summaries of evidence to assist decision makers in disasters and other humanitarian emergencies.
Another 20 minute tutorial from Tim.
PDQ-Evidence is a database specifically for finding evidence related to public health and health policy.
Ben has made an entertaining YouTube video explaining what an RCT is.
Webinar given by Martin Burton, Director of the UK Cochrane Centre, on the addressing uncertainties in treatment decisions. He also suggests some good books and websites.
Review by Jorge of “the challenges of over-diagnosis and over-treatment” featuring the co-authors of Over-diagnosed.
Cochrane Student’s Journal Club – An innovative introduction to the world of evidence based medicine.
A fantastic resource for easily getting hold of the best available evidence relating to your clinical speciality.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is a free database at the US Department of Health & Human Services. It provides summaries of evidence, clinical guidelines and more.
Want to know what PICO stands for and how to use it? You’ve come to the right place.
Revealing the truth behind rates, ratios and risk with QMP statistics tutorials. This is one of a series that helps with understanding of statistics and study design.
Understanding uncertainty is a site from the Winton programme based at the University of Cambridge, UK, that encourage healthy criticism of the statistics the media gives us.
QMP Statistics tutorials talks you through chi-squared and t-tests – a useful resource for different statistical levels.
Faculty of 1000 is a quadruple resource that allows you to search for articles, publish your own material in an open-access journal, and provides you with a place to store your posters and presentation slides. Check it out!
The Trip database provides a new way of searching for evidence, including useful features like sorting by evidence quality.
TTextras is a feature of the Testing Treatments interactive website which provides open educational resources such as games, podcasts, and videos that help people understand more about fair tests of treatments.
Want to find out how to evaluate a randomised controlled trial? This is the perfect resource for you, brought to you by CASP Tools.
There’s a lot of evidence out there of varying quality. This slideshow looks at the uses of grading medical evidence, and how it can be done.
Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) provides many tools to help you read and appraise evidence. This tool will help you make sense of the information provided in any systematic review so you can conclude if that review is valid and reliable.
Applying the evidence in clinical practice may not always be easy. This slideshow looks at the roles of patient choice and other factors in making good evidence-based clinical decisions.
This slideshow shows how the data generated in trials and analysed in systematic reviews can be applied in clinical practice.
This slideshow from the journal EBM may help introduce you to the role of Cochrane reviews in EBM.
Need something for your EBM task? Check out EBHC wiki!! You will find it there..
Dr Cates provides easy to read re-freshers on statistics and EBM topics
NICE (UK) provides thorough, comprehensive summaries of the investigation and management of common presentation in a primary care setting.
We can never be let down by the high caliber work of the Cochrane Library but its not just reviews that this site can offer…
This tutorial teaches the essentials about the statistics in medicine and covers various aspects of normal distribution (ND): central limit theorem, properties of ND, NDs with different means and with different variances, variables that follow a ND, normal plot and introduction to t-distribution
A must-have tutorial on how to critically appraise research.
QMP Medical Statistics Tutorials are a great place to start learning about the principles of evidence-based medicine. The probability & significance test, in my opinion, should be one of the first tutorials for a medical student.
This tutorial teaches you about one of the biggest enemies of strong evidence in clinical research – bias, as well as measurements and outcomes in the clinical trial.
The NHS Evidence website provides a great starting block for many clinical questions, gathering information from several NHS websites as well as several journals.
A review of an evaluating risk online course for 11 – 16 year olds, by our youngest blogger Liv!
A short article on the uses of Facebook friend finder…
The QMP Medical Statistics tutorial that is designed to show you how to apply evidence-based medicine to clinical practice in a practical and logical manner.
Statistically funny – the blog that combines cartoons, humour, and demystifying evidence-based medicine.
Find out how you can use Twitter to find out the latest healthcare-related information.
This tutorial covers how to use appropriate statistical tests and what are confidence intervals and how do you use them.
This is a tutorial that looks at the statistical basis of randomised controlled trials, the theory behind meta-analyses and how to read a meta-analysis
This is an information skills tutorial that provides the opportunity for students to learn more about searching for information
CASPin provide many tools to help you systematically read evidence and this specific tool will help you make sense of any case control study and assess its validity in a quick and easy way.
A website providing a detailed guide to the steps researchers have to take before, during and after a clinical study.
A good website from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) – with a wide range of tools to help with evidence-based research
This is a website from the Canadian Institute of Health Research, providing a list of databases and research tools for primary papers and secondary (reviews etc.) Also provides tools for constructing systematic reviews.
The BMJ has on its website a series of articles on how to read papers, including clear explanations of the statistics commonly used and common pitfalls found in studies.
A checklist to help you systematically appraise and understand diagnostic test studies.
A free, multilingual database. It includes systematic reviews, overviews of reviews (including evidence-based policy briefs), primary studies included in systematic reviews and structured summaries of that evidence.
This is a short, clearly written tutorial explaining the basic concepts of evidence-based medicine.
A short poem about regression to the mean illustrated with a few examples!
SPSS is a computer program used for statistical analysis. This tutorial will take you through a series of activities to help improve your SPSS skills.
In this medical statistics tutorial we will be looking at how the data that are collected by studies are summarized and presented in order to extract useful information. We will then start to look at how to analyse the data.
Ben Goldacre setting challenges for the Cochrane Collaboration.
This is a video from the Cochrane UK & Ireland 21st Anniversary Symposium looking at the Challenges of communication facing the Cochrane Collaboration.
This is the Opening Plenary video from the Cochrane UK & Ireland 21st Anniversary Symposium 2013.
Brilliant reworking of Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ song but to do with EBM!
Paper from the US Institute of Medicine on how clinicians should communicate with patients on evidence-based medicine.
Information for patients and members of the public in recognizing and interpreting how advertisements of screening tests can mislead them.
Short animated movie on the importance of shared decision making. Looking at how we weigh our options and what other factors affect our decisions when it comes to the patient’s needs.
This is a great website for those who want to learn more about the process of shared decision making. The website uses case studies to set out the pros and cons of each treatment option.
This resource is a tutorial, providing a thorough introduction to Evidence-Based Practice (EBP). It describes in detail how to formulate specific questions when searching for evidence on a problem, how to find this evidence using online databases, and how to evaluate and appraise the evidence found. It also outlines the economic modelling and cost-assessments behind healthcare choices.
This pack is for 12-14 year olds learn how mathematicians use mathematical models to make predictions about epidemics.
CASP have created a from to help make sense of the information given in Cohort Studies.
The EBM Pyramid shows the various levels of information available in evidence-based medicine.
12 questions to help you make sense of economic evaluations.
Download this form if you would like help reading and making sense of qualitative research.
The Clinical Evidence database is from the BMJ Evidence Centre. It is a fee-based resource for medical professionals to learn, teach and practice evidence-based medicine.
This a free database from the Aggressive Research Intelligence Facility (ARIF) at the University of Birmingham, UK. The majority of reviews relate to the effectiveness of drugs, devices or other healthcare interventions.
Check out the new Patient Information Forum website. great info on how to produce health information for patients.
Presentations for the users of the Cochrane Collaboration products.
Powerpoint on young peoples involvement with systematic reviews.
PowerPoint by Dr Amanda Burls, on randomized controlled trials and meta-analysis, described through four real-life examples.
List of suggested, helpful resources from the team at CASP. Including: summaries, critical appraisals, meta-analyses, guidelines & databases.
Video of Dr Ben Goldacre at the TED Talks in 2011. Always entertaining, Ben talks about producing fair clinical trials.
CRD in York have combined three databases for systematic review, economic evaluations, tech assessments and summaries. It includes all Cochrane reviews and protocols.
A guideline database for those based in the UK, USA, Canada & New Zealand.
Are you unsure of some EBM terms?
Then this site could be for you. It provides definitions and explanations on core EBM concepts.
Would you like to do peer reviews on biomedical literature? Here is a free online course by the Cochrane Eyes & Vision Group.
This free course was designed for doctors and is successful in explaining the basics of evidence-based practice.
This free course, is designed to help users understand the history of drug regulation and the fundamentals of how drugs are approved in the US. We recommend that you register for this Spotlight Session after completing the course, ‘Understanding Evidence-based Healthcare: A Foundation for Action’.
This one hour online module on the core principles of EBM aimed at a wide range of healthcare personnel from GP’s to medical students. To access BMJ learning requires a subscription, although if you have a BMA membership it’s available for free.
Register to become an S4BE Contributor
Another 20 minute tutorial from Tim.
The nuts and bolts 20 minute tutorial from Tim.
This new webpage from Cochrane UK is aimed at students of all ages. What is evidence-based practice? What is ‘best available research evidence’? Which resources will help you understand evidence and evidence-based practice, and search for evidence?