CERTaIN: Knowledge Synthesis: Systematic Reviews and Clinical Decision Making

What you will learn

• Conduct systematic reviews and meta-analyses using academic databases and interpret and report results
• Define strategies for critically appraising the literature
• Describe economic evaluation methods
• Describe how decisions can be made using clinical practice guidelines
• Knowledge synthesis and the knowledge-to-action process
• Benefits and limitations of systematic reviews
• Steps of a systematic review and levels of evidence
• How to search published and unpublished materials on topic of interest in a systematic and repeatable manner
• How to select and appraise studies
• Strategies for collecting and analyzing data
• How to report and update systematic reviews
• Qualitative and quantitative synthesis
• Models to use during data analysis
• Heterogeneity
• Reporting methods for meta-analyses
• Indirect comparisons
• Evidence networks
• Effect modifiers and how they are a source of bias
• Risks of bias in non-randomized studies
• Meta-regression as a tool to reduce risk of bias
• Caveats of meta-regression
• Reporting meta-analyses of non-randomized studies
• Purposes for medical testing
• Precision and accuracy
• Measures of validity for diagnostic/screening tests
• Likelihood ratio for analysis of test performance
• ROC curves for analysis of test performance
• Methods for collecting and synthesizing data
• Reporting of meta-synthesis findings
• Process of guideline development
• How evidence is evaluated
• How clinical practice guidelines are evaluated and revised
• Clinical decision analysis and economic evaluation
• Costs and methods for economic evaluation
• Cost-effectiveness and cost analysis
• Steps for economic evaluation
• Decision analysis and modeling
• Markov modeling
• Capturing of uncertainty in models
• Examples of decision modeling in cancer outcomes research

Program Overview

Discover practical ways to critically appraise scientific literature, including the conduction and interpretation of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Additionally, you will learn how to conduct literature searches using online academic databases, hear about economic evaluations, and understand how clinical practice guidelines are used to guide decision making.

This course includes the following 11 lectures:

Overview of Systematic Reviews

Finding and Managing the Evidence from the Biomedical Literature

Intervention Reviews Methodology

Meta-Analysis of Clinical Trials: Direct Comparisons

Introduction to Meta-Analysis: Indirect Comparisons

Meta-Analysis of Non-Randomized Studies

Diagnostic Test Evaluation

Meta-Synthesis

Clinical Practice Guidelines

Economic Evaluation

Decision Analysis for Outcomes Research

This course is intended for anyone interested in comparative effectiveness research (CER) and patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) methods.

This course is supported by grant number R25HS023214 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.