Evidence-support models

COVID-END is interested in profiling innovative models that support decision-making about COVID-19. If you have created, piloted and documented a model that you are willing to share, please email us at covid-end@mcmaster.ca.

For now we can profile a rapid-response model that can be used or adapted by other groups that are supporting decision-makers with very short turn-around times. View some examples of outputs and read the description below of some key features of the model.

Details to be provided in a request

  • Question, ideally with the following details if applicable
    • Population (e.g., frail elderly in rural and remote communities)
    • Intervention (and comparator), exposure or phenomenon of interest
    • Focus (e.g., care experiences, health outcomes, costs, provider experiences for human studies; measurement properties for instrument studies)
  • Context for question (e.g., requested from a group of small, rural hospitals or from a diverse, mid-sized city)
  • Anything already known or any documents already identified
  • Special timing considerations (e.g., need quick response as well as an update in one week)

Description of the current model

  • Turn-around time = 4 hours to three days
  • Process
    • Search for published and grey literature using our guide to COVID-19 evidence sources
    • Identify five types of document types
      • Guidelines that were developed using a robust process (e.g., GRADE)
      • Full systematic reviews (or review-derived products such as overviews of systematic reviews)
      • Rapid reviews
      • Protocols for systematic reviews
      • Titles/questions for systematic reviews or rapid reviews that have been identified as either being conducted or prioritized to be conducted
      • Single studies were only included if no relevant reviews were identified and/or the reviews are old and/or the science is moving fast
    • Assess relevance and extract data about the recency of the search (or last updated dated)
    • Prioritize for profiling a small number of highly relevant and recently conducted documents
    • Appraise the quality of prioritized full systematic reviews and rapid reviews using AMSTAR
  • Product name
    • Rapid evidence profile
  • Product format
    • Summary with hyperlinks to prioritized documents
    • Table that provides an overview of the type and number of documents that were identified
    • Table that lists all documents that address the question, organized by document type and sorted by relevance to the question and to COVID-19 (hyperlinked where possible and flagged as available upon request when no hyperlink is available)
  • Issue that continues to be worked through
    • Where to draw the line for single studies