Ian Shemilt - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Ian Shemilt

Risk of bias judgements. (DOCX 31 kb)

Characteristics of excluded studies. (DOCX 14 kb)

Sample search strategies. Search strategies for PubMed and Academic Search Premier. (DOCX 27Â kb)

Wellcome Open Research, 2021

Background: Conventionally, searching for eligible articles to include in systematic reviews and ... more Background: Conventionally, searching for eligible articles to include in systematic reviews and maps of research has relied primarily on information specialists conducting Boolean searches of multiple databases and manually processing the results, including deduplication between these multiple sources. Searching one, comprehensive source, rather than multiple databases, could save time and resources. Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) is potentially such a source, containing a network graph structure which provides metadata that can be exploited in machine learning processes. Research is needed to establish the relative advantage of using MAG as a single source, compared with conventional searches of multiple databases. This study sought to establish whether: (a) MAG is sufficiently comprehensive to maintain our living map of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) research; and (b) eligible records can be identified with an acceptably high level of specificity. Methods: We conducted a pra...

The European health psychologist, 2017

Background: Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of ‘nudging’ and ‘choice architecture’, in... more Background: Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of ‘nudging’ and ‘choice architecture’, increasing research and policy attention is being applied to altering aspects of the small-scale physical environment, such as portion sizes or product positioning, to change health-related behaviour at population level. However, there is no reliable framework that incorporates standardised labels and definitions, hampering both the synthesis of cumulative evidence about intervention effects, and the identification and discussion of intervention opportunities. To address this, a new tool, TIPPME (Typology of Interventions in Proximal Physical Micro-Environments) has been developed. Methods: TIPPME was developed and assessed over three phases of work (identifying need for a typology; developing and elaborating on this typology; reliability testing and finalising), comprising seven main stages of development. This included two reliability testing exercises completed by behaviour change exper...

Background: This study developed, calibrated, and evaluated a machine learning (ML) classifier de... more Background: This study developed, calibrated, and evaluated a machine learning (ML) classifier designed to reduce study identification workload inmaintainingthe Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register (CCSR), a continuously updated register of COVID-19 research studies.Methods: A ML classifier for retrieving COVID-19 research studies (the “Cochrane COVID-19 Study Classifier”) was developedusing a data set of title-abstract records ‘included’ in, or‘excluded’ from,the CCSR up to18th October 2020, manually labelled byinformation and data curation specialists or the Cochrane Crowd. The classifier was then calibrated using a second data set of similar records ‘included’ in, or ‘excluded’ from,theCCSRbetween 19th October and 2ndDecember 2020, aiming for 99% recall. Finally, the calibrated classifier was evaluated using a third data set of similar records ‘included’ in, or ‘excluded’ from, the CCSR between4thand 19thJanuary 2021.Results: The Cochrane COVID-19 Study Classifier was trained using 5...

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2021

To present the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) concept... more To present the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) conceptual approach to the assessment of certainty of evidence from modelling studies (i.e. model outputs). Study Design and Setting: We performed expert consultations, held an international multidisciplinary workshop, and further elaborated a conceptual approach for assessing the certainty of evidence from models within the context of systematic reviews, health technology assessments, and health care decisions. We assessed the content validity of the approach obtaining feedback from experts in a broad range of modelling and health care disciplines. Results: Workshop participants agreed, that the domains determining the certainty of evidence previously identified in the GRADE approach (risk of bias, indirectness, inconsistency, imprecision, reporting bias, magnitude of an effect, dose-response relation, and the direction of residual confounding) also apply in the context of assessing the certainty of evidence from models. The assessment itself will depend on the nature of model inputs and the model itself. We distinguished the assessment of the certainty of model outputs from a single model and across multiple models. We proposed a framework for selecting the best available evidence from models: 1) to develop de novo a model specific to the situation of interest, 2) to identify an existing model the outputs of which provide the highest certainty evidence for the situation of interest, that could be used either "off the shelf" or after adaptation, and 3) to use outputs from multiple models. We also present a summary of preferred terminology to facilitate communication among various modelling and health care disciplines. Conclusions: This conceptual GRADE approach provides a framework for using evidence from models in health decision making and the assessment of certainty of evidence from a model or models. The GRADE Working Group and the modelling community continue developing detailed methods and related guidance for the assessment of specific domains determining the certainty of evidence from models.

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2021

Background and Objectives: Filtering the deluge of new research to facilitate evidence synthesis ... more Background and Objectives: Filtering the deluge of new research to facilitate evidence synthesis has proven to be unmanageable using current paradigms of search and retrieval. Crowdsourcing, a way of harnessing the collective effort of a ''crowd'' of people, has the potential to support evidence synthesis by addressing this information overload created by the exponential growth in primary research outputs. Cochrane Crowd, Cochrane's citizen science platform, offers a range of tasks aimed at identifying studies related to health care. Accompanying each task are brief, interactive training modules, and agreement algorithms that help ensure accurate collective decisionmaking.The aims of the study were to evaluate the performance of Cochrane Crowd in terms of its accuracy, capacity, and autonomy and to examine contributor engagement across three tasks aimed at identifying randomized trials. Study Design and Setting: Crowd accuracy was evaluated by measuring the sensitivity and specificity of crowd screening decisions on a sample of titles and abstracts, compared with ''quasi gold-standard'' decisions about the same records using the conventional methods of dual screening. Crowd capacity, in the form of output volume, was evaluated by measuring the number of records processed by the crowd, compared with baseline. Crowd autonomy, the capability of the crowd to produce accurate collectively derived decisions without the need for expert resolution, was measured by the proportion of records that needed resolving by an expert. Results: The Cochrane Crowd community currently has 18,897 contributors from 163 countries. Collectively, the Crowd has processed 1,021,227 records, helping to identify 178,437 reports of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for Cochrane's Central Register of Controlled Trials. The sensitivity for each task was 99.1% for the RCT identification task (RCT ID), 99.7% for the RCT identification task of trials

Systematic Reviews, 2019

The third meeting of the International Collaboration for Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR)... more The third meeting of the International Collaboration for Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR) was held 17-18 October 2017 in London, England. ICASR is an interdisciplinary group whose goal is to maximize the use of technology for conducting rapid, accurate, and efficient systematic reviews of scientific evidence. The group seeks to facilitate the development and widespread acceptance of automated techniques for systematic reviews. The meeting's conclusion was that the most pressing needs at present are to develop approaches for validating currently available tools and to provide increased access to curated corpora that can be used for validation. To that end, ICASR's short-term goals in 2018-2019 are to propose and publish protocols for key tasks in systematic reviews and to develop an approach for sharing curated corpora for validating the automation of the key tasks.

Nature Human Behaviour, 2017

Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of 'nudging' and 'choice architecture', there is incre... more Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of 'nudging' and 'choice architecture', there is increasing research and policy attention on altering aspects of the small-scale physical environment, such as portion sizes or product positioning, to change health-related behaviour at population-level. There is, however, a lack of clarity in characterising these interventions, and no reliable framework incorporating standardised definitions. This hampers both the synthesis of cumulative evidence about intervention effects, and the identification of intervention opportunities. To address this, a new tool, TIPPME (Typology of Interventions in Proximal Physical Micro-Environments) has been developed, here applied to the selection, purchase and consumption of food, alcohol and tobacco. This provides a framework to reliably classify and describe, and enable more systematic design, reporting and analysis of, an important class of interventions. In doing so, it makes a distinct contribution to collective efforts to build the cumulative evidence-base for effective ways of changing behaviour across populations.

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2017

New approaches to evidence synthesis, which use human effort and machine automation in mutually r... more New approaches to evidence synthesis, which use human effort and machine automation in mutually reinforcing ways, can enhance the feasibility and sustainability of living systematic reviews. Human effort is a scarce and valuable resource, required when automation is impossible or undesirable, and includes contributions from online communities (''crowds'') as well as more conventional contributions from review authors and information specialists. Automation can assist with some systematic review tasks, including searching, eligibility assessment, identification and retrieval of full-text reports, extraction of data, and risk of bias assessment. Workflows can be developed in which human effort and machine automation can each enable the other to operate in more effective and efficient ways, offering substantial enhancement to the productivity of systematic reviews. This paper describes and discusses the potentialdand limitationsdof new ways of undertaking specific tasks in living systematic reviews, identifying areas where these human/machine ''technologies'' are already in use, and where further research and development is needed. While the context is living systematic reviews, many of these enabling technologies apply equally to standard approaches to systematic reviewing.

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2017

Systematic reviews are difficult to keep up to date, but failure to do so leads to a decay in rev... more Systematic reviews are difficult to keep up to date, but failure to do so leads to a decay in review currency, accuracy and utility. We are developing a novel approach to systematic review updating we term 'living systematic review' (LSR): systematic reviews which are continually updated, incorporating relevant new evidence as it becomes available. Living systematic reviews may be particularly important in fields where research evidence is emerging rapidly, current evidence is unclear and new research may change policy or practice decisions. We hypothesise that a continual approach to updating will achieve greater currency, and therefore accuracy and benefits to end users, with feasible resource requirements over time. This paper is the first in a series published in this issue of the journal, providing an overview of living systematic reviews and living guideline recommendations. This introductory paper introduces the why, what, when and how of living systematic reviews. Key issues in living systematic reviews are discussed, including searching, updating scenarios, production processes, editorial and peer review and publication. Other papers in the series explore the contribution from new technologies, such as text mining, machine learning and crowd sourcing (Paper 2); examine the statistical issues associated with repeated meta-analysis (Paper 3); and describe the opportunities to link living systematic reviews with living guidelines (Paper 4).

Journal of clinical epidemiology, Jan 29, 2017

This paper reviews the available evidence and guidance on methods to identify reports of quasi-ex... more This paper reviews the available evidence and guidance on methods to identify reports of quasi-experimental (QE) studies to inform systematic reviews of health care, public health, international development, education, crime and justice, and social welfare. Research, guidance and examples of search strategies were identified by searching a range of databases, key guidance documents, selected reviews, conference proceedings and personal communication. Current practice and research evidence were summarised. 4914 records were retrieved by database searches and additional documents were obtained by other searches. QE studies are challenging to identify efficiently because they have no standardized nomenclature and may be indexed in various ways. Reliable search filters are not available. There is a lack of specific resources devoted to collecting QE studies and little evidence on where best to search. Searches to identify QE studies should search a range of resources and, until indexing...

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2017

Altering the availability or proximity of food, alcohol, and tobacco products to change their sel... more Altering the availability or proximity of food, alcohol, and tobacco products to change their selection and consumption.

BMC public health, Jan 12, 2017

Explicit labelling of lower strength alcohol products could reduce alcohol consumption by attract... more Explicit labelling of lower strength alcohol products could reduce alcohol consumption by attracting more people to buy and drink such products instead of higher strength ones. Alternatively, it may lead to more consumption due to a 'self-licensing' mechanism. Equivalent labelling of food or tobacco (for example "Low fat" or "Low tar") could influence consumption of those products by similar mechanisms. This systematic review examined the effects of 'Low alcohol' and equivalent labelling of alcohol, food and tobacco products on selection, consumption, and perceptions of products among adults. A systematic review was conducted based on Cochrane methods. Electronic and snowball searches identified 26 eligible studies. Evidence from 12 randomised controlled trials (all on food) was assessed for risk of bias, synthesised using random effects meta-analysis, and interpreted in conjunction with evidence from 14 non-randomised studies (one on alcohol, sev...

Systematic reviews, Feb 20, 2017

There is limited information about how transgender, gender diverse, and Two-Spirit (trans) people... more There is limited information about how transgender, gender diverse, and Two-Spirit (trans) people have been represented and studied by researchers. The objectives of this study are to (1) map and describe trans research in the social sciences, sciences, humanities, health, education, and business, (2) identify evidence gaps and opportunities for more responsible research with trans people, (3) assess the use of text mining for study identification, and (4) increase access to trans research for key stakeholders through the creation of a web-based evidence map. Study design was informed by community consultations and pilot searches. Eligibility criteria were established to include all original research of any design, including trans people or their health information, and published in English in peer-reviewed journals. A complex electronic search strategy based on relevant concepts in 15 databases was developed to obtain a broad range of results linked to transgender, gender diverse, ...

PloS one, 2017

Trastuzumab improves survival in HER2+ breast cancer patients, with some evidence of adverse card... more Trastuzumab improves survival in HER2+ breast cancer patients, with some evidence of adverse cardiac side effects. Current recommendations are to give adjuvant trastuzumab for one year or until recurrence, although trastuzumab treatment for only 9 or 10 weeks has shown similar survival rates to 12-month treatment. We present here a multi-arm joint analysis examining the relative cost-effectiveness of different durations of adjuvant trastuzumab. Network meta-analysis (NMA) was used to examine which trials' data to include in the cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). A network using FinHer (9 weeks vs. zero) and BCIRG006 (12 months vs. zero) trials offered the only jointly randomisable network so these trials were used in the CEA. The 3-arm CEA compared costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) associated with zero, 9-week and 12-month adjuvant trastuzumab durations in early breast cancer, using a decision tree followed by a Markov model that extrapolated the results to a lifetim...

Systematic reviews, Aug 17, 2016

Meta-research studies investigating methods, systems, and processes designed to improve the effic... more Meta-research studies investigating methods, systems, and processes designed to improve the efficiency of systematic review workflows can contribute to building an evidence base that can help to increase value and reduce waste in research. This study demonstrates the use of an economic evaluation framework to compare the costs and effects of four variant approaches to identifying eligible studies for consideration in systematic reviews. A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted using a basic decision-analytic model, to compare the relative efficiency of 'safety first', 'double screening', 'single screening' and 'single screening with text mining' approaches in the title-abstract screening stage of a 'case study' systematic review about undergraduate medical education in UK general practice settings. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) were calculated as the 'incremental cost per citation 'saved' from inappropriate exclu...

Risk of bias judgements. (DOCX 31 kb)

Characteristics of excluded studies. (DOCX 14 kb)

Sample search strategies. Search strategies for PubMed and Academic Search Premier. (DOCX 27Â kb)

Wellcome Open Research, 2021

Background: Conventionally, searching for eligible articles to include in systematic reviews and ... more Background: Conventionally, searching for eligible articles to include in systematic reviews and maps of research has relied primarily on information specialists conducting Boolean searches of multiple databases and manually processing the results, including deduplication between these multiple sources. Searching one, comprehensive source, rather than multiple databases, could save time and resources. Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) is potentially such a source, containing a network graph structure which provides metadata that can be exploited in machine learning processes. Research is needed to establish the relative advantage of using MAG as a single source, compared with conventional searches of multiple databases. This study sought to establish whether: (a) MAG is sufficiently comprehensive to maintain our living map of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) research; and (b) eligible records can be identified with an acceptably high level of specificity. Methods: We conducted a pra...

The European health psychologist, 2017

Background: Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of ‘nudging’ and ‘choice architecture’, in... more Background: Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of ‘nudging’ and ‘choice architecture’, increasing research and policy attention is being applied to altering aspects of the small-scale physical environment, such as portion sizes or product positioning, to change health-related behaviour at population level. However, there is no reliable framework that incorporates standardised labels and definitions, hampering both the synthesis of cumulative evidence about intervention effects, and the identification and discussion of intervention opportunities. To address this, a new tool, TIPPME (Typology of Interventions in Proximal Physical Micro-Environments) has been developed. Methods: TIPPME was developed and assessed over three phases of work (identifying need for a typology; developing and elaborating on this typology; reliability testing and finalising), comprising seven main stages of development. This included two reliability testing exercises completed by behaviour change exper...

Background: This study developed, calibrated, and evaluated a machine learning (ML) classifier de... more Background: This study developed, calibrated, and evaluated a machine learning (ML) classifier designed to reduce study identification workload inmaintainingthe Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register (CCSR), a continuously updated register of COVID-19 research studies.Methods: A ML classifier for retrieving COVID-19 research studies (the “Cochrane COVID-19 Study Classifier”) was developedusing a data set of title-abstract records ‘included’ in, or‘excluded’ from,the CCSR up to18th October 2020, manually labelled byinformation and data curation specialists or the Cochrane Crowd. The classifier was then calibrated using a second data set of similar records ‘included’ in, or ‘excluded’ from,theCCSRbetween 19th October and 2ndDecember 2020, aiming for 99% recall. Finally, the calibrated classifier was evaluated using a third data set of similar records ‘included’ in, or ‘excluded’ from, the CCSR between4thand 19thJanuary 2021.Results: The Cochrane COVID-19 Study Classifier was trained using 5...

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2021

To present the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) concept... more To present the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) conceptual approach to the assessment of certainty of evidence from modelling studies (i.e. model outputs). Study Design and Setting: We performed expert consultations, held an international multidisciplinary workshop, and further elaborated a conceptual approach for assessing the certainty of evidence from models within the context of systematic reviews, health technology assessments, and health care decisions. We assessed the content validity of the approach obtaining feedback from experts in a broad range of modelling and health care disciplines. Results: Workshop participants agreed, that the domains determining the certainty of evidence previously identified in the GRADE approach (risk of bias, indirectness, inconsistency, imprecision, reporting bias, magnitude of an effect, dose-response relation, and the direction of residual confounding) also apply in the context of assessing the certainty of evidence from models. The assessment itself will depend on the nature of model inputs and the model itself. We distinguished the assessment of the certainty of model outputs from a single model and across multiple models. We proposed a framework for selecting the best available evidence from models: 1) to develop de novo a model specific to the situation of interest, 2) to identify an existing model the outputs of which provide the highest certainty evidence for the situation of interest, that could be used either "off the shelf" or after adaptation, and 3) to use outputs from multiple models. We also present a summary of preferred terminology to facilitate communication among various modelling and health care disciplines. Conclusions: This conceptual GRADE approach provides a framework for using evidence from models in health decision making and the assessment of certainty of evidence from a model or models. The GRADE Working Group and the modelling community continue developing detailed methods and related guidance for the assessment of specific domains determining the certainty of evidence from models.

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2021

Background and Objectives: Filtering the deluge of new research to facilitate evidence synthesis ... more Background and Objectives: Filtering the deluge of new research to facilitate evidence synthesis has proven to be unmanageable using current paradigms of search and retrieval. Crowdsourcing, a way of harnessing the collective effort of a ''crowd'' of people, has the potential to support evidence synthesis by addressing this information overload created by the exponential growth in primary research outputs. Cochrane Crowd, Cochrane's citizen science platform, offers a range of tasks aimed at identifying studies related to health care. Accompanying each task are brief, interactive training modules, and agreement algorithms that help ensure accurate collective decisionmaking.The aims of the study were to evaluate the performance of Cochrane Crowd in terms of its accuracy, capacity, and autonomy and to examine contributor engagement across three tasks aimed at identifying randomized trials. Study Design and Setting: Crowd accuracy was evaluated by measuring the sensitivity and specificity of crowd screening decisions on a sample of titles and abstracts, compared with ''quasi gold-standard'' decisions about the same records using the conventional methods of dual screening. Crowd capacity, in the form of output volume, was evaluated by measuring the number of records processed by the crowd, compared with baseline. Crowd autonomy, the capability of the crowd to produce accurate collectively derived decisions without the need for expert resolution, was measured by the proportion of records that needed resolving by an expert. Results: The Cochrane Crowd community currently has 18,897 contributors from 163 countries. Collectively, the Crowd has processed 1,021,227 records, helping to identify 178,437 reports of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for Cochrane's Central Register of Controlled Trials. The sensitivity for each task was 99.1% for the RCT identification task (RCT ID), 99.7% for the RCT identification task of trials

Systematic Reviews, 2019

The third meeting of the International Collaboration for Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR)... more The third meeting of the International Collaboration for Automation of Systematic Reviews (ICASR) was held 17-18 October 2017 in London, England. ICASR is an interdisciplinary group whose goal is to maximize the use of technology for conducting rapid, accurate, and efficient systematic reviews of scientific evidence. The group seeks to facilitate the development and widespread acceptance of automated techniques for systematic reviews. The meeting's conclusion was that the most pressing needs at present are to develop approaches for validating currently available tools and to provide increased access to curated corpora that can be used for validation. To that end, ICASR's short-term goals in 2018-2019 are to propose and publish protocols for key tasks in systematic reviews and to develop an approach for sharing curated corpora for validating the automation of the key tasks.

Nature Human Behaviour, 2017

Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of 'nudging' and 'choice architecture', there is incre... more Reflecting widespread interest in concepts of 'nudging' and 'choice architecture', there is increasing research and policy attention on altering aspects of the small-scale physical environment, such as portion sizes or product positioning, to change health-related behaviour at population-level. There is, however, a lack of clarity in characterising these interventions, and no reliable framework incorporating standardised definitions. This hampers both the synthesis of cumulative evidence about intervention effects, and the identification of intervention opportunities. To address this, a new tool, TIPPME (Typology of Interventions in Proximal Physical Micro-Environments) has been developed, here applied to the selection, purchase and consumption of food, alcohol and tobacco. This provides a framework to reliably classify and describe, and enable more systematic design, reporting and analysis of, an important class of interventions. In doing so, it makes a distinct contribution to collective efforts to build the cumulative evidence-base for effective ways of changing behaviour across populations.

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2017

New approaches to evidence synthesis, which use human effort and machine automation in mutually r... more New approaches to evidence synthesis, which use human effort and machine automation in mutually reinforcing ways, can enhance the feasibility and sustainability of living systematic reviews. Human effort is a scarce and valuable resource, required when automation is impossible or undesirable, and includes contributions from online communities (''crowds'') as well as more conventional contributions from review authors and information specialists. Automation can assist with some systematic review tasks, including searching, eligibility assessment, identification and retrieval of full-text reports, extraction of data, and risk of bias assessment. Workflows can be developed in which human effort and machine automation can each enable the other to operate in more effective and efficient ways, offering substantial enhancement to the productivity of systematic reviews. This paper describes and discusses the potentialdand limitationsdof new ways of undertaking specific tasks in living systematic reviews, identifying areas where these human/machine ''technologies'' are already in use, and where further research and development is needed. While the context is living systematic reviews, many of these enabling technologies apply equally to standard approaches to systematic reviewing.

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2017

Systematic reviews are difficult to keep up to date, but failure to do so leads to a decay in rev... more Systematic reviews are difficult to keep up to date, but failure to do so leads to a decay in review currency, accuracy and utility. We are developing a novel approach to systematic review updating we term 'living systematic review' (LSR): systematic reviews which are continually updated, incorporating relevant new evidence as it becomes available. Living systematic reviews may be particularly important in fields where research evidence is emerging rapidly, current evidence is unclear and new research may change policy or practice decisions. We hypothesise that a continual approach to updating will achieve greater currency, and therefore accuracy and benefits to end users, with feasible resource requirements over time. This paper is the first in a series published in this issue of the journal, providing an overview of living systematic reviews and living guideline recommendations. This introductory paper introduces the why, what, when and how of living systematic reviews. Key issues in living systematic reviews are discussed, including searching, updating scenarios, production processes, editorial and peer review and publication. Other papers in the series explore the contribution from new technologies, such as text mining, machine learning and crowd sourcing (Paper 2); examine the statistical issues associated with repeated meta-analysis (Paper 3); and describe the opportunities to link living systematic reviews with living guidelines (Paper 4).

Journal of clinical epidemiology, Jan 29, 2017

This paper reviews the available evidence and guidance on methods to identify reports of quasi-ex... more This paper reviews the available evidence and guidance on methods to identify reports of quasi-experimental (QE) studies to inform systematic reviews of health care, public health, international development, education, crime and justice, and social welfare. Research, guidance and examples of search strategies were identified by searching a range of databases, key guidance documents, selected reviews, conference proceedings and personal communication. Current practice and research evidence were summarised. 4914 records were retrieved by database searches and additional documents were obtained by other searches. QE studies are challenging to identify efficiently because they have no standardized nomenclature and may be indexed in various ways. Reliable search filters are not available. There is a lack of specific resources devoted to collecting QE studies and little evidence on where best to search. Searches to identify QE studies should search a range of resources and, until indexing...

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2017

Altering the availability or proximity of food, alcohol, and tobacco products to change their sel... more Altering the availability or proximity of food, alcohol, and tobacco products to change their selection and consumption.

BMC public health, Jan 12, 2017

Explicit labelling of lower strength alcohol products could reduce alcohol consumption by attract... more Explicit labelling of lower strength alcohol products could reduce alcohol consumption by attracting more people to buy and drink such products instead of higher strength ones. Alternatively, it may lead to more consumption due to a 'self-licensing' mechanism. Equivalent labelling of food or tobacco (for example "Low fat" or "Low tar") could influence consumption of those products by similar mechanisms. This systematic review examined the effects of 'Low alcohol' and equivalent labelling of alcohol, food and tobacco products on selection, consumption, and perceptions of products among adults. A systematic review was conducted based on Cochrane methods. Electronic and snowball searches identified 26 eligible studies. Evidence from 12 randomised controlled trials (all on food) was assessed for risk of bias, synthesised using random effects meta-analysis, and interpreted in conjunction with evidence from 14 non-randomised studies (one on alcohol, sev...

Systematic reviews, Feb 20, 2017

There is limited information about how transgender, gender diverse, and Two-Spirit (trans) people... more There is limited information about how transgender, gender diverse, and Two-Spirit (trans) people have been represented and studied by researchers. The objectives of this study are to (1) map and describe trans research in the social sciences, sciences, humanities, health, education, and business, (2) identify evidence gaps and opportunities for more responsible research with trans people, (3) assess the use of text mining for study identification, and (4) increase access to trans research for key stakeholders through the creation of a web-based evidence map. Study design was informed by community consultations and pilot searches. Eligibility criteria were established to include all original research of any design, including trans people or their health information, and published in English in peer-reviewed journals. A complex electronic search strategy based on relevant concepts in 15 databases was developed to obtain a broad range of results linked to transgender, gender diverse, ...

PloS one, 2017

Trastuzumab improves survival in HER2+ breast cancer patients, with some evidence of adverse card... more Trastuzumab improves survival in HER2+ breast cancer patients, with some evidence of adverse cardiac side effects. Current recommendations are to give adjuvant trastuzumab for one year or until recurrence, although trastuzumab treatment for only 9 or 10 weeks has shown similar survival rates to 12-month treatment. We present here a multi-arm joint analysis examining the relative cost-effectiveness of different durations of adjuvant trastuzumab. Network meta-analysis (NMA) was used to examine which trials' data to include in the cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). A network using FinHer (9 weeks vs. zero) and BCIRG006 (12 months vs. zero) trials offered the only jointly randomisable network so these trials were used in the CEA. The 3-arm CEA compared costs and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) associated with zero, 9-week and 12-month adjuvant trastuzumab durations in early breast cancer, using a decision tree followed by a Markov model that extrapolated the results to a lifetim...

Systematic reviews, Aug 17, 2016

Meta-research studies investigating methods, systems, and processes designed to improve the effic... more Meta-research studies investigating methods, systems, and processes designed to improve the efficiency of systematic review workflows can contribute to building an evidence base that can help to increase value and reduce waste in research. This study demonstrates the use of an economic evaluation framework to compare the costs and effects of four variant approaches to identifying eligible studies for consideration in systematic reviews. A cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted using a basic decision-analytic model, to compare the relative efficiency of 'safety first', 'double screening', 'single screening' and 'single screening with text mining' approaches in the title-abstract screening stage of a 'case study' systematic review about undergraduate medical education in UK general practice settings. Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) were calculated as the 'incremental cost per citation 'saved' from inappropriate exclu...