A simple experiment, searching PubMed for mentions of rapid reviews over time and doing a similar thing with systematic reviews.

For my own sake I lumped (technical term) some earlier dates to give the following results for rapid reviews:

• 1980-89 – 10
• 1990-1999 – 25
• 2000-2004 – 32
• 2005-2009 – 31
• 2010 – 10
• 2011 – 14
• 2012 – 11
• 2013 – 18
• 2014 – 36
• 2015 – 54
• 2016 – 74

And for systematic reviews:

• 1960-69 – 1
• 1970-79 – 18
• 1980-1984 – 33
• 1985-1989 – 65
• 1990-1994 – 95
• 1995 – 73
• 1996 – 116
• 1997 – 223
• 1998 – 350

Charting these and showing side-by-side:

Note the inflection point for systematic reviews appears around 1995-1997 and for rapid reviews it’s 2012-2014 – so 17 years behind!

We also collate articles on methods relating to rapid reviews (click here) and this shows a similar acceleration.

NOTE: Actual search for rapid reviews was “rapid review” or “rapid reviews” and for systematic reviews it was “systematic review” or “systematic reviews”