gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: The CGS Guideline Development Portal (https://www.guideline-service.de/) was developed to improve medical research in quality by expanding and providing IT-infrastructures for the development of evidence and consensus based clinical guidelines.

Methods: In addition to functions for the support of transparent collaborative work and consensus building, the support for the selection, administration and provision of the evidence base is a central component of the application. The literature management and screening assistant (LiSA) was developed for this purpose. The development took place based on the experiences from earlier guideline projects and in cooperation with internal and external guideline developers.

Results: LiSA aims for a comprehensive and transparent evidence synthesis for guideline developments.

Search results from different databases can be imported and will be linked to uploaded full texts, automatically.

LiSA supports two screening phases (TiAb and Fulltext) with multiple screeners, who can be blinded during screening. Contradicting votes can be resolved in matching phases by a third screener. During the screening, self-defined keywords can be highlighted in color (keyword highlighting). Reasons for exclusion can be freely defined and are documented for each decision during the screening. Easily, the system delivers all the data necessary for creating the PRISMA diagrams. Screening results can be exported for all screening phases and for all reasons of exclusion.

The administration sheet shows the current progress of all screeners as a control function for project coordinators.

LiSA supports critical appraisal of references with implemented checklists from OCEBM, JBI, Amstar and Newcastle-Ottawa-Scale together with customized checklists for the automated creation of evidence tables.

Conclusions: The literature management and screening assistant LiSA has been used by guideline developers for several years and is constantly being improved and adapted by the CGS development team. To meet the current requirements even better and to bring the system up to date with the latest technology, a fundamental revision is planned. Above all, the wishes and needs of the users should be precisely analyzed to further improve functionality and usability.

Keywords: literature screening, critical appraisal, reference management, web application