AHRQ EPC Series on Improving Translation of Evidence: Web-Based Interactive Presentation of Systematic Review Reports

Abstract

Systematic reviews are used by a diverse range of users to address an ever-expanding set of questions and needs. It is unlikely that a single static report will efficiently satisfy the different needs of diverse users.

Methods: An open-source Web-based interactive report presentation of a systematic review was developed to allow users to generate their own "reports" from the information produced by the review. Data from a broad-scope systematic review were used with network meta-analysis conducted on nonsurgical treatments of urinary incontinence (UI) in women. Stakeholders informed and piloted the tool and assessed its usefulness.

Results: The final tool allows users to obtain descriptive and analytic results for a network of treatment categories and various outcomes (cure, improvement, satisfaction, quality of life, adverse events) across several subgroups (all women, older women, or those with stress or urgency UI), along with study-level information, and overall conclusions. The stakeholders were satisfied with the functionality of the tool and proposed a number of improvements regarding presentation (for example, present information on numbers of trials in figures), analyses (for example, allow on-the-fly subgroup analyses, explore trade-offs between several outcomes), and information sharing (for example, provide ability to import/export data from/to other software).

Conclusion: A prototype tool to present customized analyses from broad-scope systematic reviews is presented. Further improvements are suggested to develop a scalable tool to make systematic reviews useful to increasingly diverse user groups.