World EBHC Day : October 20 2022

[Sly Saint]

World EBHC Day launches campaign to address global health challenges through partnerships for purpose

through partnerships for purpose

JBI, Cochrane, Campbell, GIN, the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, the Centre for Evidence-based Health Care, and NICE recently launched the World Evidence-Based Healthcare (EBHC) Day 2022 campaign, ‘Partnerships for Purpose’.

World EBHC Day is held on 20 October each year. It is a global initiative that raises awareness of the need for better evidence to inform healthcare policy, practice and decision making in order to improve health outcomes globally. It is an opportunity to participate in debate about global trends and challenges, but also to celebrate the impact of individuals and organisations worldwide, recognising the work of dedicated researchers, policymakers and health professionals in improving health outcomes.

The 2022 campaign aims to examine partnerships and practical considerations around establishing different types of partnerships, accelerating innovation, ensuring equity and integrity, overcoming challenges and biases, lessons learned and achieving impact for improved health outcomes globally.

https://www.cochrane.org/news/world...ealth-challenges-through-partnerships-purpose

 

[Sly Saint]

NICE and Cochrane: working together

Brief background

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) produces guidelines for health and care in England. Decisions on how they apply in other UK countries are made by ministers in the Welsh Government, Scottish Government, and Northern Ireland Executive. The guidelines are produced by independent advisory committees comprising people with expertise in systematic reviews and health economics analyses, clinicians, and lay members who have an interest in the topic.

Cochrane produces Cochrane systematic reviews that are recognised as being high quality in evidence-based healthcare.
Systematic reviews are a key component of guideline development. Typically, when developing NICE guidelines, there are 15 to 20 clinical questions, which are addressed by systematic reviews. These reviews are usually carried out ‘in-house’ by NICE guideline development teams who also routinely search for and use existing relevant, high-quality and up-to-date systematic reviews to inform the development of these.

Going further together

In September 2021, NICE and Cochrane signed a collaborative agreement to enable better use of Cochrane Reviews and Cochrane expertise in NICE guidelines.

This agreement also supports NICE’s strategy for 2021–2026, which aims to have dynamic, living guideline recommendations by creating and maintaining up-to-date guidance that integrates the latest evidence and technologies in a useful and usable format. NICE is transitioning from producing full guidelines to a more modular, living approach of recommendations or clusters of recommendations enabling rapid updates and a more efficient process.

Collaborating with Cochrane will help NICE achieve this as the organisations align priorities and answer important questions relevant to health and social care. The collaboration will also enhance efficiencies by reducing the number of duplicated surveillance and evidence-reviewing activities.

Despite these new arrangements, some challenges to working collaboratively remain. NICE timelines for development of an evidence review are typically quicker (roughly three to six weeks) and less flexible than the production timeline for a Cochrane review. There is a need to agree to timelines and editorial processes to ensure a Cochrane review can be considered in NICE guidelines.

Another challenge is the alignment of review questions, especially the outcomes component of the review questions. NICE may exclude Cochrane reviews when the outcomes selected in the Cochrane reviews differ from the outcomes selected for the NICE guideline. Work is being done to align the outcomes, especially in areas where core outcome sets have not yet been decided. Working together as early as possible will help to reduce duplication and enable better sharing of evidence.

https://worldebhcday.org/blog/story?ebhc_blog_story_id=334

 

[Hutan]

There's a lot there that is very ironic when looked at from the position of a person with ME/CFS.

e.g. Partnerships
from the first document:

There is a growing concern, which was heightened during the pandemic, about making partnerships and collaboration equitable for — and beneficial to — all partners. Although willingness to collaborate has increased, vested interests, bureaucracy and inability to change remain limiting factors.

That last sentence pretty much sums up the Cochrane Review of exercise as a treatment for ME/CFS - they'd like the appearance of collaboration with people with ME/CFS on the review with its advisory committee, but "vested interests, bureaucracy and inability to change" mean that the process is going nowhere useful.

from the blog about NICE

The guidelines are produced by independent advisory committees comprising people with expertise in systematic reviews and health economics analyses, clinicians, and lay members who have an interest in the topic.

That's an interesting way to describe the 'lay members'. The first group of people bring their expertise in systematic reviews and health economics analyses; then there's the clinicians; and then, separated off by a comma, are the lay members with "an interest in the topic". There's no recognition that the lay members bring expertise. Perhaps it's pedantry, but the sentence construction betrays the bias. They could have easily said "The guidelines are produced by independent [advisory] committees of people with expertise in evidence analysis, health economics, clinical care and the patient experience."

Describing NICE's approach as "The guidelines are produced by independent advisory committees" is interesting too. My impression is that the NICE ME/CFS committee wasn't an advisory committee at all, it led the production of the guideline. Contrast that with Cochrane's approach, which traditionally has involved anyone with a particular agenda to push volunteering to write the review. The involvement of an 'independent advisory group' was trialled for the Cochrane ME/CFS exercise review - it's a Cochrane invention and it was supposed to be the way of the future. But it was not at all clear what power the IAG would have to influence outcomes.


e.g. Timing

Despite these new arrangements, some challenges to working collaboratively remain. NICE timelines for development of an evidence review are typically quicker (roughly three to six weeks) and less flexible than the production timeline for a Cochrane review. There is a need to agree to timelines and editorial processes to ensure a Cochrane review can be considered in NICE guidelines.

The timeline for the Cochrane ME/CFS exercise review has certainly been 'flexible'.

World EBHC Day calls on individuals and organisations around the world to take action as we lead up to World EBHC Day on 20 October. Everyone is invited to contribute to the global discussion on how to partner for purpose to address global health challenges.

Looks like they want input.

 

[ladycatlover]

Suspect they wouldn't want our input! I don't think they could take the criticism. But I suppose we should try and communicate? Or is it really just pointless? Remember Paul thingy from Liverpool is one of their top guns. Makes me ashamed to live in Liverpool!

 

[Kitty]

Looks like they want input.

Whether it's worth our bothering might depend on how they define the word "evidence".