Website Review |
Evidence-Based Medicine
http://ebm.bmjjournals.com
Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) ‘A digest of the very best new research of direct relevance to medical practice’ is a BMJ Online publication, a private limited company based in the UK.And it does largely what it says: the reviewers (whom seemingly have unlimited amounts of time to devote to doing this) examine >100 journals and 50 000 articles to identify the 120 most important articles that they publish. EBM cites a paper in which it was shown that in order to glean the information from just one EBM article you would need to read 227 articles in the Lancet or 118 articles in the New England Journal of Medicine (what does that say about the Lancet?).
The field of EBM is increasing fast and has many players. Being part of the BMJ publishing group adds weight to the momentum EBM has, and it sports a focused agenda in that they are not supported by educational grants from outside sources. Their papers are selected using strict criteria (although it was difficult for me to find out what these criteria actually were), and are then reviewed by clinicians to assess their clinical relevance. However, the focus is clinical and there does not seem to be much specialized occupational medical input into this: using the keywords, I could find very little that would be directly relevant to occupational medical practice: even ‘occupational asthma’ yielded nothing. Perhaps, given the huge importance of occupation to health, there is an opportunity there for a reviewer for EBM!
After getting through security, each article is meticulously referenced: indeed, there are hyperlinks to the relevant article should you wish to review it yourself. There are strict criteria for inclusion of worthwhile articles, which are very useful. The critical appraisal again is meticulous and, to my admittedly limited knowledge, expert.
The format is in a variety of forms, from letters to PowerPoint presentations, and the front page is attractive, although containing pop-ups and flashing adverts which can be quite distracting. Once you navigate to other pages, the appearance becomes clearly more utilitarian. As you might expect, there are multiple methods of searching this website for information, from subject to individual title, topic or author: the searches are fast and accurate. Helpfully, the topic title often summarizes the evidence, so the more idle or gullible (like me) can choose to accept the evidence in a one-liner rather than dredging through the analysis.
As always, you do not get something for nothing: you can have free access to the website and extracts of the articles, but by no means the full text: for that you have to pay. At the time of writing, the annual personal subscription charge was £92 for website and paper-based and £59 for web access only. A new edition comes out every 2 months.
Scoring (1 = lowest score, 5 = highest)
- Access speed = 5
- Speed of searches = 5 (impressive)
- User friendliness = 3 (ranges from utilitarian to irritating pop-ups)
- Links to other web sites (5 = comprehensive)
- Overall score 4 (could be more attractive)
- Speed of searches = 5 (impressive)
Of general interest to occupational physicians.
CiteULike 
Connotea 
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