Article
Keeping up to date with information retrieval research in HTA: Summarized Research in Information Retrieval (SuRe Info)
Search Medline for
Authors
-
Sari Ormstad
- Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services (NOKC), Oslo, Norway
-
Sigrid Droste
- Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im Gesundheitswesen (IQWiG), Köln, Germany
-
Jaana Isojärvi
- National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Finnish Office for Health Technology Assessment (Finohta), Helsinki, Finland
-
Patrice Chalon
- Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre (KCE), Brüssel, Belgium
-
Steven Duffy
- Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD), University of York, York, United Kingdom
-
Julie Glanville
- York Health Economics Consortium (YHEC), University of York, York, United Kingdom
-
Su Golder
- Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD), University of York, York, United Kingdom
-
David Kaunelis
- Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH), Ottawa, Canada
-
Carol Lefebvre
- Lefebvre Associates Ltd, Oxford, United Kingdom
| Published: | March 10, 2014 |
|---|
Outline
Text
Background / aim: Increasing numbers of research papers about information retrieval for health technology assessments, systematic reviews and other evidence syntheses are being published, but it is time-consuming and demanding to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in the field. A web resource entitled Summarized Research in Information Retrieval for HTA (SuRe Info) has been developed to meet this challenge.
Methods: The project was launched by the Interest Sub-Group on Information Resources (IRG) of Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi) in 2011. Our workflow to develop the structure of topics:
- 1.
- Developing templates to present summaries of the research studies along with a brief critical appraisal.
- 2.
- Creating a specific keyword structure to tag the included publications.
- 3.
- Identifying the publications on information retrieval methods by running topic-specific search strategies in selected relevant databases.
- 4.
- Screening the identified publications.
- 5.
- Writing summaries and appraisals for the included publications.
- 6.
- Synthesizing the appraisals into topic specific chapters.
Results: SuRe Info is published as a part of an existing web resource, the HTAi Vortal. It consists of two sections: 1) information on general search methods common across all health technologies and 2) methods to use when searching for specific aspects of health technologies, such as clinical effectiveness, safety and economic evaluations (mainly based on the structure of the HTA Core Model® developed by EUnetHTA). Within both sections there are chapters summarizing the current research findings concerning a particular information retrieval aspect. The references listed at the end of each chapter are linked to structured appraisals of the included publications. Links to the full text of the publications are also provided, where possible.
SuRe Info (http://www.sure-info.org) was officially launched in June 2013. A number of SuRe Info chapters have been completed and are being updated twice a year. Further chapters are in progress.
Conclusion: SuRe Info is a new open-access web resource that provides research-based summaries of best information retrieval practice when producing health technology assessments and systematic reviews. It seeks to help information specialists stay up-to-date in the latest developments in this field by providing easy access to summaries of current methods papers, and in that way support research-based information retrieval practice.
