Grant: New Investigator - PA: Drug Safety and Effectiveness - Comparative Effectiveness

Patients, healthcare providers, and policy-makers rely on high quality evidence to make important decisions about medical treatments. Overviews of reviews are a new method of bringing together high quality health evidence about the effectiveness and safety of different treatments for a health condition or illness. Overviews offer one-stop shopping or a "friendly front-end" for decision-making by bringing together evidence from different, often complex, sources into a single product. Overviews are relatively new in the medical literature, therefore the methods for their production are not consistent. Research is needed to refine how they are done to make sure that they include all relevant information and present accurate information about whether or not treatments are safe and effective. Overviews of reviews have the potential to become an important tool for patients, healthcare providers, and policy-makers when making treatment decisions. This research will refine the methods for producing and reporting overviews of reviews to ensure that they provide the highest quality evidence for informed decision-making.