Month: January 2016

Example Rapid Review

Example rapid review: Empagliflozin in Type 2 Diabetes

The second rapid review produced using regulatory data, the first being Brexpiprazole for schizophrenia. Empagliflozin in Type 2 Diabetes Background: Empagliflozin is a reversible, potent and selective competitive inhibitor of sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2). SGLT2 is highly expressed in the kidney (proximal tubules) where it is responsible for 90% of glucose reabsorption from the glomerular filtrate back into the circulation. Inhibition of SGLT2 reduces renal … Continue reading Example rapid review: Empagliflozin in Type 2 Diabetes

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Example Rapid Review

Example rapid review: Brexpiprazole for schizophrenia

After a great conversation with Erick Turner yesterday I thought I would make an attempt at a rapid review.  Erick wrote the seminal paper Selective publication of antidepressant trials and its influence on apparent efficacy.  In this paper Erick used FDA regulatory documents to highlight significant discrepancies between reviews based on published journal articles and regulator data.  Nothing I’ve seen makes me think that reviews … Continue reading Example rapid review: Brexpiprazole for schizophrenia

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Article review

Article review: Rapid Evidence Reviews for Health Policy and Practice

Rapid Evidence Reviews for Health Policy and Practice. Academy Health 2015 This is a nice overview and it’s clear and well written.  The summary states: “Health policymakers in the United States and elsewhere are increasingly interested in making evidence-based policy decisions, but require assistance navigating the large volume of material in peer-reviewed and grey literature. This trend has led many organizations to identify methods for … Continue reading Article review: Rapid Evidence Reviews for Health Policy and Practice

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Event

Regulatory Data Workshop, Oxford June 2016

The inclusion of regulatory data is unlikely to speed any evidence review up.  However, it’s a really important topic in considering an evidence synthesis and it’s for that reason I’m highlighting this workshop organised by the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine (CEBM) in Oxford.  Taken from the CEBM website: In this workshop Tom and Kamal will present and discuss some of these issues on the basis of … Continue reading Regulatory Data Workshop, Oxford June 2016

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Article review

Article review: The Empirical Evidence of Bias in Trials Measuring Treatment Differences

The Empirical Evidence of Bias in Trials Measuring Treatment Differences, AHRQ 2014. This paper sought to assess the effect of various biases on effect estimates in randomised controlled trials.  It also looks at the implications for systematic review producers.  This alone makes it pertinent for the site as assessment of bias is a time-consuming (and therefore costly) process.  Although we should note automated methods are … Continue reading Article review: The Empirical Evidence of Bias in Trials Measuring Treatment Differences

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Autosynthesis, Website

Systematic Review Assistant – a prototype

I’m based in Bristol, as is Louise Millard, who created the Systematic Review Assistant as part of her PhD – it’s a small world! The Systematic Review Assistant is a tool, based on text mining methods, to automate risk of bias assessments in systematic reviews.  As such it’s in the same area as RobotReviewer, which I’ve previously highlighted.  It’s a prototype but still good fun to … Continue reading Systematic Review Assistant – a prototype

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Autosynthesis

10 Machine Learning Terms Explained in Simple English

If you’re interested in machine learning but are unsure of some of the terminology you’re going to love this article: 10 Machine Learning Terms Explained in Simple English It covers terms such as Machine Learning, Supervised Learning, Decision Trees and Deep Learning. It’s an easy read so check it out!  As an added bonus it links to an article on Natural Language Processing as well … Continue reading 10 Machine Learning Terms Explained in Simple English

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Commentary

Why do we do systematic reviews? The final poll

Voting is over in the second poll asking ‘Why do we do systematic reviews?’  I re-ran the poll as I felt the questions could have been better worded from the first one!  So, the results: To see what has been done before, to see if new research is needed and/or to learn from previous research – 29.31% (27.35%) To quantify, quite tightly, how good an intervention is … Continue reading Why do we do systematic reviews? The final poll

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Commentary

All in the Family, a follow-up

In an earlier post I highlighted the editorial ‘All in the Family: systematic reviews, rapid reviews, scoping reviews, realist reviews, and more’.  In the editorial the authors raised the issue of systematic reviews being a family and rapid, systematic, scoping were all part of the ‘evidence synthesis’ family. I contacted the authors with a couple of questions/observations: They highlighted that systematic reviews used systematic methods which could be … Continue reading All in the Family, a follow-up

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