Current best evidence for clinical care
COVID-19 Evidence Alerts is a McMaster Premium LiteratUre Service (PLUSTM) service from the Health Information Research Unit (HiRU) at McMaster University, the "cradle" of Evidence-Based Medicine.
COVID-19 Evidence Alerts alerts users to current best evidence for clinical care of people with threatened, suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection. It is updated every weekday as evidence reports are published in all journals included in MEDLINE. Reports are critically appraised for scientific merit, and those with acceptable scientific merit are appraised for relevance and importance by frontline clinicians.
Study reports that provide lower-quality scientific evidence that appears to be relevant to the diagnosis, prevention and treatment, harm from treatments, prognosis, clinical prediction, guidelines, are also posted, with at least one reason for their lower quality (eg, nonrandomized trial, loss of >20% of patients to follow-up).
As of the end of March 2020, the amount of higher-quality evidence to support COVID-specific clinical action is extremely limited. COVID-19 Evidence Alerts will thus find the best available evidence, including studies "below the line" of high-quality and clinical relevance, as defined on our website. Evidence "above-the-line" is clearly distinguished from evidence that does not meet this standard.
COVID-19 Evidence Alerts differs from other McMaster PLUS services (eg, ACCESSSS, EvidenceAlerts, ACP JournalWise, Optimal Aging Portal) in these ways:
Subscribers to ACCESSSS, EvidenceAlerts, or ACP JournalWise can opt in to receive COVID-19 Evidence Alerts most easily through the link provided on the landing page of those services, without need to register. Non-subscribers can register to COVID-19 Evidence Alerts here.
Registration is free.