Evidence Synthesis Ireland

Health care decisions should be based on the combination of the full amount of information that is available rather than relying on the convenient selection of one or more individual pieces of information, or studies. Evidence synthesis methods seek to establish the overall balance of information on a given topic, and are based on identifying, assessing and examining all the available evidence on a given topic to inform health care decisions. Despite the rapid increase in the amount and availability of healthcare evidence, there is a lack of capacity to conduct evidence synthesis, also known as reviews of information, and a lack of knowledge and awareness of their benefit to inform health care policy and clinical practice decisions. Our proposal for HRB-CBES can improve this capacity. We want to build evidence synthesis knowledge, awareness and capacity among the public, health care institutions and policymakers, clinicians and researchers on the Island of Ireland. Our overall approach to building this capacity within HRB-CBES is to: ? Identify existing evidence synthesis skills and where those skills needs to be enhanced, provide training activities such as workshops, webinars and 'train the trainers' programs; ? Bring the findings of evidence syntheses closer to the general public by making them more accessible and easier to understand; ? Build capacity through evidence synthesis fellowships and studentships; ? Advance evidence synthesis methodology through a formal prioritisation process on important, unanswered evidence synthesis methods questions. At the end of the funding period, there will be greater knowledge, awareness and capacity in evidence synthesis across all stakeholder groups. Our capacity building, and other activities, will help make evidence syntheses more usable in every sense of the word -better designed, conducted and reported, more useable for decision makers and more usable within health care policy and practice decision making.

Award Date

24 May 2018

Award Value

€1,999,731.92

Principal Investigator

Professor Declan Devane

Host Institution

National University of Ireland, Galway

Scheme

Capacity Building for Evidence Synthesis