Our reviews take between three and six months and we aim to provide summaries of the current knowledge and evidence in an accessible and timely way to answer questions and areas of concern identified by Integrated Care Boards (ICBs).
The reviews support decision making and service improvement by health and social care bodies through the provision of these summaries and reports.
Background
Evidence synthesis identifies, evaluates and combines data from multiple sources, most commonly from existing research studies, to provide an overall summary of current knowledge supporting decision-making across health and social care.
Evidence syntheses are based on systematic processes to identify and collate relevant evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria and to minimise the influence of bias. Combining individual study results and considering differences can reduce uncertainty and help make sense of conflicting study findings. There are various types of review and we provide “rapid reviews” for when an answer is needed quickly.
We aim to address knowledge gaps or to answer a specific need for the ICBs. These are in areas of importance to policy makers and have a direct impact on decision-making, patient and client care, reducing inequalities and identifying future research needs.
The outputs are evidence syntheses that provides a comprehensive review of published literature with explicit search strategy, appropriate range of sources and critical assessment of quality of evidence and strength of findings. The exact methodology for synthesis will depend on the subject and nature of available evidence and on the timeframe for reporting required by ICBs.
The team is comprised of two 0.5 FTE researchers across a range of academic institutions and led by a Senior Research Fellow at UKC.
We use the Applied Research Collaboration Kent, Surrey and Sussex and Health Innovation Kent, Surrey, Sussex's Implementation Panel to prioritise requests when necessary.
