Improving the evidence-base for primary care: NIHR Evidence Synthesis working group

For doctors and patients to make reliable judgments about the value of a medical test or treatments od the organisation of healthcare, they should have access to the best available evidence. However, basing a decision on just one bit of evidence is rarely reliable to make a decision in healthcare. Therefore we need to collect all the evidence, on a specific topic, and summarise this evidence. One way to do this is by carrying out “systematic reviews”. This method - systematic reviews - collects all the evidence on a given medical topic, making a judgment as to whether the evidence is good or bad, and finally summarizing all of this evidence to provide an overall summary of the implications and the effectiveness.

In this program of work a collection of researchers, from eight of the primary care departments in the School of Primary Care are planning on doing a number of systematic reviews - of high relevance to the NHS - in collaboration with each other. The topics these reviews cover include how services offered to patients in primary care can be improved, how we assess new drugs and technologies for patients from complicated reports, how we treat patients in emergencies and how we manage patients at the end of their lives.

If you'd like to find more about the Evidence Synthesis Working Group and the Training and Capacity Development programme follow this link.