Harvest or
Profusion: SOPs For Literature Search
A. Rüther,
H.-P. Dauben, H. Schweim; German Agency for HTA (DAHTA) at the German
Institute For Medical Information and Documentation
Introduction: For the
preparation of reports for Health Technology Assessment (HTA) lots of
methodological standards have been developed. For the collection of data,
however, only recommendations exist. We implemented Standard Operating
Procedures (SOP), a well known method for quality assurance in industrial
processes, for a pool of 35 biomedical databases and compared the results with
the literature search of German HTA-reports.
Methods: The SOPs
describe every step in the process of literature search (i.e. databases
[standard: Amed, Biosis Previews, Catline, Cochrane Library, Embase,
Healthstar, Int. Health Technology Assessment (IHTA), Medline, Scisearch,
Somed; complementary databases according to topic out of 29], their handling
and the procedure of extraction and condensation of data. Controlling by
independent experts, clear documentation of each step, duplicate check and
check for relevance are mandatory. The results of the SOPs were compared to the
results of published German HTA reports.
Results:
HTA-Report
|
Used DB in report |
Report results |
Additional DB |
Results |
|
|
N |
% |
||||
|
Comparative effectiveness
and differential indication of PTCA vs. CABG in CAD |
ME, EM, HE,
CLib. |
50 |
IS, BA, HT |
12 |
24 |
|
The Evaluation of Stroke
Units as Medical Technology |
ME, EM, Clib,Somed |
32 |
IS, BA, HT, HE |
3 |
9 |
|
The role of
osteodensitometry in the context of prevention / therapy of osteoporosis |
ME, EM, Clib,Somed |
109 |
IS, BA, HT, HE |
19 |
17 |
|
Positron emission
tomography; economic efficiency |
ME, EM, HE, CLib. |
58 |
IS, BA, HT |
172 |
29 |
|
PET
- Oncology |
41 |
|
6 |
15 |
|
|
PET
- Cardiology |
13 |
|
7 |
54 |
|
|
PET
- Neuromed1 |
3 |
|
4 |
133 |
|
|
1
Neuromedicine means the combination of: Neurology, Neurosurgery and
Psychiatry 2 Contains
the literature in regard to the three main topics of the HTA-report (oncology,
cardiology Neuromedicine only ME=Medline,
EM=Embase, BA= Biosis Preview, IS SciSearch; HE=Healthstar, HT= ECRI IHTA,
CLib=Cochrane Library (incl. DARE, INAHTA,etc.) |
|||||
Conclusions: In first
approximation the implementation of SOPs leads to improvement in literature research.
SOPs need continuous evaluation and development. For this purpose a process of
commentary and criticism will be initiated. Participation is welcome.
(http://www.dahta.de)