Living Systematic Reviews: towards real-time evidence for health-care decision-making
12 May, 16 | by BMJ
By Chris Mavergames and Julian Elliott
Systematic reviews aim to provide an accurate summary of available evidence for specific health questions. In practice, an increase in methodological expectations and an increasing deluge of primary studies challenges the ability of many review teams to produce timely, high quality systematic reviews and to keep them up to date. Only a minority of reviews are updated within 2 years and as new research is published in the intervening period, these delays lead to significant inaccuracy. One estimate is that 7% of systematic reviews are inaccurate the day they are published and after two years 23% of reviews that are not updated will present incorrect conclusions. The difficulties faced by review teams in keeping reviews up to date leads to considerable inaccuracy and to some extent undermines the value created through the use of rigorous methods. more…