BMJ Best Practice
What is it? Best Practice has been designed and built from the ground up for use specifically as a decision-support tool at the point of care
Highlights: Latest research evidence, guidelines and expert opinion are combined in a single source and presented in a step-by-step approach, covering prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis.
EBM: Referenced studies are listed, and full text is linked where available.
What is it? ClinicalKey provides access to more than 1100 medical texts published by Elsevier, journal articles, practice guidelines, drug information, and patient education handouts. It also features evidence-based, point-of-care information in First Consult.
Highlights: In ClinicalKey, use the drop down menu next to the search box to switch to First Consult. In the app, after searching, look for results labeled as First Consult.
EBM: The “Summary of evidence” sections of First Consult articles detail evidence levels and sources for recommendations made.
Cochrane Clinical Answers
What is it? Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs) provide a readable, digestible, clinically focused entry point to rigorous research from Cochrane systematic reviews. They are designed to be actionable and to inform decision making at the point of care. Each Cochrane Clinical Answer contains a clinical question, a short answer, and an opportunity to ‘drill down’ to the evidence from relevant Cochrane reviews.
Highlights: These clinical answers are very truncated summaries of systematic reviews.
EBM: The Cochrane Collaboration is world renowned for their quality evidence-based publications.
The Cochrane Library
What is it? The Cochrane Library is a collection of evidence-based medicine databases, providing clinicians reliable and current information on the effects of interventions in health care.
Highlights: The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews are the gold standard of medical literature, providing comprehensive research analyses on a variety of medical treatments; DARE critiques other systematic reviews in a structured abstract format; CENTRAL provides a repository of clinical trial citations.
EBM: The Cochrane Collaboration is world renowned for their quality evidence-based publications.
DynaMed Plus
What is it? A point of care medical reference updated daily by a review of the medical literature.
Highlights: Organized in a structured note format, content is easy to navigate; both overall recommendations and specific study results are included; available for mobile resource download.
EBM: References are provided for recommendations. These references are given a grade based on the level of evidence behind the recommendation.
Natural Medicines
What is it? Natural Standard was founded by healthcare providers and researchers to provide high-quality, evidence-based information about complementary and alternative therapies.
Highlights: When available, the evidence for using substances for specific uses is provided in a table. Interactions and side effects are also listed. You are able to look up information by desired effect or by therapies.
EBM: Grades reflect the level of available scientific data for or against the use of each therapy for a specific medical condition.
PubMed Clinical Queries
What is it? Clinical Queries is designed to locate articles in PubMed with higher levels of evidence.
Highlights: Use Clinical Queries to search by study type (etiology, diagnosis, therapy, prognosis or clinical prediction guides) or search for systematic reviews, evidence-based practice guidelines and meta-analyses.
EBM: Clinical trials, meta-analyses and practice guidelines are labeled, but other evidence levels must be self-identified.
PubMed Main Search Page
What is it? This database contains over 19 million citations for biomedical literature. Apply limits for publication types with higher levels of evidence.
Highlights: Gives access to most current medical research including yet to be published materials. Set up an NCBI account to set up alerts and save searches.
EBM: Limit publication types to meta-analyis, randomized-controlled trials, etc.
SumSearch
What is it? This search enging was developed by the University of Texas Health Sciences Center as a way to quickly search and filter health sciences literature.
Highlights: SUMSearch 2 simultaneously searches for studies (origina studies and systematic reviews), and practice guidelines. Searches for studies are revised up to 6 times as needed, while guidelines may be revised once.
EBM: Uses the Haynes filters in addition to journal lists from McMaster to search multiple resources.
TRIP Database
What is it? TRIP (Turning Research into Practice) locates the highest possible evidence with which to inform clinical decisions, using the principles of evidence based medicine.
Highlights: Provides integrated results from a variety of clinical resources.
EBM: Results include evidence-based synopses, systematic reviews, guidelines and PubMed.
UpToDate
What is it? A point of care tool written and edited by a global community of 4,800 physicians. Recommendations are often graded in terms of supporting evidence.
Highlights: Contains over 9,000 topics in 19 specialties.
EBM: Provides a grading system for recommendations that shows whether the recommendation is weak or strong and whether or not there is evidence to support the recommendation.