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Evidence-Based Medicine Resource Center

What is Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM)?

Launched in 1992 and now a required part of medical training, EBM is the powerful system healthcare providers use to navigate scientific knowledge(1). It is a process that involves 4 key steps(2) to help you:

Frame the medical question properly;
Find high quality medical information;
Evaluate information to determine its validity; and
Apply the evidence to one’s care.

Why is EBM important?

With over 2 million articles published in the medical journals each year, doctors and patients are overwhelmed with information and what to trust. A small fraction of this information is truly helpful to clinical practice(3). EBM helps you navigate this information by showing you how to ask better questions and identify more reliable information to get better answers.

Harnessing EBM in a partnership to better health

As helpful as EBM is, many healthcare providers are pressed for time and find it challenging to do as thoroughly as they would like. Conversely, many patients have the time to search for health information and over 113 million in the United States do(4). But until now, few have learned an organized approach for doing this. What if patients could learn to use the same skills and some of the resources their providers use to identify the best research evidence?

One of our goals at SuperSmartHealth is to empower healthcare providers and patients with the tools of EBM to support a partnership to better health. The resource that follows is written from the patients’ perspective. If you are a healthcare provider, we hope you find the resource helpful to your practice of EBM and share it with your patients.

If you are a patient or if you search for health information for a loved one, this content is intended to help you find better information. It is not intended to be a substitute for, nor does SuperSmart Health provide, professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or how to treat it. By using this website we hope you feel more informed and empowered to participate fully in your healthcare decisions with your provider.

Let’s Get Started!

Proceed to the Frame section to learn how to ask the right clinical question. You will discover that when this is not done correctly, you can end up finding the right answer to the wrong question.

If you are Returning

You can find your way to any of the sections you’re interested in by clicking on the links in the first paragraph above or the roll-down tabs beneath the EBM Resource Center icon in the top left hand corner of this page.

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