The first stage of the Living Evidence project culminated last week, after almost a year of collaboration between Epistemonikos Foundation and researchers from the IIB Sant Pau University of Barcelona and the Cochrane Iberoamerica team. This initiative was created to support decision-making in health through the creation of models and strategies for synthesis, as well as the implementation and adaptation of tools for the optimal management of scientific evidence.
The Living Evidence project has reached the end of its first stage, a pilot conducted in a real setting, carried out along with 8 health research organizations. This methodology offers a new approach to the optimization of evidence synthesis processes. In Epistemonikos we have been working on this kind of innovation for a number of years, and this new milestone has been described as “successful and an important learning opportunity” by our Chief Scientific Methods Officer, Dr Camila Ávila. According to Dr Ávila, the team was “able to learn how to better support the teams who are conducting syntheses of living evidence, as well as which are the technological improvements we should pursue in order allow our tools to better fulfil their purpose of facilitating evidence synthesis processes. Although this was just a pilot, the participating organizations were able to come far in their different researches, completing the protocols for their syntehses, having all the information and the instruments needed to select the evidence and keep it organized and updated, through our Epistemonikos Database and L·OVE Platform“.
The team of this first pilot has already produced an evidence synthesis report and has completed training in the Epistemonikos tools and living evidence methodologies. They have also defined their research questions and the associated parameters for screening and selecting the evidence. In the next stages, the project will publish its first summaries of evidence.
Our CEO, Dr Gabriel Rada, explains that “this is the first time a fully updated version of our L·OVE platform has been applied in a real context to tackle non-COVID-19 issues, given that our first experiences were a response to the need for evidence created by the pandemic -which resulted in the first evidence repository (L·OVE) to contain all the evidence on COVID-19, including systematic reviews, primary studies and clinical trials. From now on, the Living Evidence teams will be challenged to strengthen what they have already learned and make the necessary adjustments, as well as to incorporate the evidence as it is produced, which is the living component of the project”.
Dr María Ximena Rojas, academic at the IIB Sant Pau University and leader of the Living Evidence project, affirms that “the role of the Epistemonikos team has been fundamental in the synthesis processes, for example, in the identification of key research questions, helping generate searches of evidence both in Epistemonikos and in other sources. The training they provided and the support they gave to the project management team were also important. They allowed us to provide better and more efficient support to the participating organizations”.
Participating organizations:
- Agència de Qualitat i Avaluació Sanitàries de Catalunya (AQuAS),
- Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud (IACS),
- Sanitary Technology Evaluation Unit. Hospital Ramón y Cajal,
- Servicio Navarro de Salud (Osasunbidea),
- Programa de Qualitat Assistencial,
- Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau,
- Direcció de Qualitat, Processos i Innovación,
- Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron,
- European Guidelines for Breast Cancer Screening and Diagnosis,
- NICE surveillance programme
