Patient collaborator - systematic review methods - Also a survey on systematic reviews

[A Former User]

We had a request for a patient collaborator for a group at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. They have 2 patients involved in their project, but one is currently dealing with some health issues, and had to take some time off.

In this case, they are looking for someone who is very familiar with systematic review methods. They are looking at when systematic reviews should be replicated.

It's a highly theoretical question, and not limited to any disease area.

Might anyone on PAN be interested in this?

Annette

[A Former User]

If you don't want to be a collaborator - here's a survey on the same topic: (It sounds interesting and is for Cochrane)

You are invited to participate in a survey on when to replicate and when not to replicate systematic reviews. This survey is part of a CIHR-funded project, led by Drs. Peter Tugwell and Vivian Welch, entitled "when should systematic reviews be replicated, and when is it wasteful?" Though replication is a cornerstone of the scientific method, replication of systematic reviews is too often either overlooked, done unnecessarily or done poorly.

We define replication as: 1) the purposeful repetition of an existing systematic review addressing a defined PICO, to test whether the same results are obtained, or 2) the purposeful extension of an existing review to assess whether the original findings can be repeated by either broadening or narrowing the focus of the review.

Numerous groups developing guidelines, decision aids and policy briefs lack tools to judge the need for replicating prior systematic reviews. Thus they have no way of knowing which systematic reviews should be prioritised for funding, or for which topics further replication is needless, which can result in a poor use of resources or even waste. Furthermore, a lack of guidance for when or why to replicate systematic reviews has also lead to confusion amongst users (patients, clinicians and other decision-makers) as to the reasons for the increasing number of overlapping reviews, and how to sort out the not-infrequent discordance in findings between reviews on the same topics.

The overarching aim of the project is to develop guidance on when to replicate and when not to replicate systematic reviews.

In this survey, we ask for your feedback on a decision algorithm for systematic review replication. Participating in the survey is voluntary. Only anonymized and aggregate data will be shared and published. No one will be able identify you through your survey responses except for authorized members of the research team conducting this survey. Your consent to participate in this research is implicit upon completing the survey.

The survey takes approximately 30 minutes to complete. You may begin the survey by clicking on the following link or copying it into your browser: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/patients_LK99V3Z

For questions or comments, please contact Sathya Karunananthan at skarunananthan@ohri.ca

Thank you,

Peter Tugwell & Vivian Welch