Find the Evidence: A Search Strategy

With so much information available on the Internet, it is difficult to know where to begin. You could use a general search engine to find information. This can be helpful but the amount of information retrieved can be overwhelming. Furthermore, this is not a systematic way to search to ensure you get the most up to date, comprehensive and reliable information from reputable sources.

The following search strategy helps you drill down to the limits of medical knowledge on your questions of interest, while combining efficiency, reliability and thoroughness. It incorporates a number of databases that healthcare providers use to find information and some of the best consumer-friendly resources.

Our three-step search strategy takes you through the following levels of information:

Broad summaries If you are unfamiliar with a topic or condition the most efficient place to start is searching up-to-date online textbooks and encyclopedic websites. These resources provide foundational knowledge, including background on a disease, its symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. The limitation of broad focused summaries is that they are generally not designed to be exhaustive reviews on everything known, which is why we drill down further using narrower summaries next.
Narrow summaries After acquiring foundational knowledge, you will be in a better position to create well-framed clinical questions as discussed above in the Frame section. For example, you will be more familiar with the latest new therapies and current standard of therapies we can compare them against. In this step we drill down deeper, searching for high quality evidence-based systematic reviews on our well framed clinical questions. Here we take a look at databases that provide high-quality syntheses, which are expert compilations that endeavor to bring together all known relevant clinical trials on a focused clinical question (some of the resources in Broad Summaries above may reference this literature, but not always). At this level we also reference databases that provide synopses, which are expert commentaries on individual syntheses and studies. The limitation of narrow-focused summaries is that they are only as comprehensive and up-to-date as the date in which the last study was included in the synthesis or referenced in the synopsis. To be very thorough, we proceed to the final step.
Individual studies Here we search for the most current studies that have been published since the cutoff date for the last trial included in the synthesis or synopsis. This ensures we are entirely up-to-date.

To get started, first explore the databases and websites in the Broad Summaries step. If you are returning and already familiar with the content of all three steps, go to the Resource Quick Links page to access the resources of interest. Most of the resources referenced are FREE, unless otherwise mentioned or indicated with a sign.

Broad Summaries

Super Smart Health

Empowering Health and Wellbeing

Find the Evidence: A Search Strategy