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Supplement
3
PRODIGY
guidelines - advice on management
of conditions and symptoms commonly seen in
primary care.
Clinical
Evidence - summaries of the current
state of knowledge and uncertainty about the
prevention and treatment of clinical conditions,
based on thorough searches and appraisal of
the literature.
Cochrane
Library - a regularly updated collection
of evidence-based medicine resources, including
The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
This contains the full text of evidence based
systematic reviews of health care interventions,
prepared by The Cochrane Collaboration.
NHS
Cost and Effectiveness Reviews
- produced by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination
at the University of York. Includes DARE (Database
of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness - a
database of quality-assessed reviews of the
effects of treatment) and NHSEED (NHS Economic
Evaluation Database - comparisons of two or
more treatment or care alternatives by cost-benefit
analysis, cost-utility analysis, or cost-effectiveness
analysis).
Drug
and Therapeutics Bulletin - provides
rigorous and independent evaluations of individual
treatments and overall management of disease
for healthcare professionals. Also produces
similar information for patients in the form
of Treatment Notes. Only available
outside NHSnet with an Athens
password (available to employees who work
for, deliver services on behalf of, or work
in conjunction with the NHS).
NHS
Health Technology Assessment (HTA) programme
- commissions high quality research on the costs,
effectiveness and broader impact of health technologies
in the NHS.
Guidelines
Finder - A searchable database
of UK clinical guidelines.
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- National
Prescribing Centre (NPC) and
UK
Medicines Information (UKMI) bulletins
- designed to inform key purchasers in primary
and secondary care of new drugs which may have
significant therapeutic, financial and service
impact on the health service. Evaluations are
prepared either several months before launch
or within a few months of launch. The London
New Drugs Group is a part of UKMI that particularly
focuses on new medicines. (NB Some of the information
on these websites is password protected for
a restricted audience.)
- National
Horizon Scanning Centre technology briefings
- provide advance notice of significant new
and emerging health technologies to the Department
of Health.
- NHS Cost and Effectiveness
Reviews, Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin, NHS
HTA programme (explained above). See
www.nelh.nhs.uk
- Scottish
Medicines Consortium - provides
advice to NHS Boards and their Area Drug and
Therapeutics Committees across Scotland about
the status of all newly licensed medicines,
all new formulations of existing medicines and
any major new indications for established products.
- Midlands
Therapeutic Review and Advisory Committee (MTRAC)
- an independent committee of GPs and representatives
of other key decision-makers in the use of medicines
in primary care. They provide assessments of
selected medicines on their clinical value,
safety and suitability for use in primary care
in the West Midlands Region. The recommendations
of the Committee and the evidence considered
in the evaluations are summarised in verdict
and summary sheets.
- Northern
and Yorkshire Regional Drug and Therapeutics
Centre (NYRDTC) - aims to promote
safe, effective and economical use of medicines
in the NHS in the Northern and Yorkshire Region.
The centre delivers a broad range of services
relating to prescribing and the use of medicines.
These include critical appraisal and drug evaluations.
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Information
Mastery: Feeling good about not knowing everything
Information Mastery consisted
of two conferences hosted by the National Prescribing
Centre in March 2005, run by the founders of InfoPOEMs
(information on patient-oriented evidence that
matters), Profs David Slawson and Allen Shaughnessy.
Information Mastery was designed to help healthcare
practitioners to develop effective ways of identifying,
filtering, evaluating, using and, most importantly,
applying new information to enhance patient care.
The conference and supporting
materials explain how to assess the usefulness
of information by determining its relevance and
validity. Usefulness is also dependant on how
much time and effort it takes to search for the
information required. Therefore, rather than trying
to stay up to date by reading, the course shows
busy healthcare professionals how to search quickly
to find the best answer to clinical problems they
face.
The evaluation of information
can be expressed as a formula:
Usefulness =
relevance x validity
time
and effort required
The following supporting
materials to this conference are available:
Using
evidence to guide practice: MeReC Briefing No.
30. September 2005
This Briefing
discusses approaches for sourcing the most useful
evidence about interventions and explains some
of the concepts necessary for its interpretation
to help healthcare professionals and patients
decide which interventions are appropriate for
their care. It is supported by an online
supplement.
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