Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Jul 9, 2019
Date Accepted: Oct 25, 2019
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Tools to assess the trustworthiness of evidence-based point-of-care information for health care professionals: A systematic review
ABSTRACT
Background:
User-friendly information at the point-of-care should be well structured, rapidly accessible and comprehensive. This information should be trustworthy for use by health care practitioners to practice evidence-based medicine. Therefore, a standard, validated tool to evaluate the trustworthiness of such point-of-care information resources is needed.
Objective:
This systematic review aims to search for tools to assess trustworthiness of point-of-care resources and to describe and analyze the content of these tools.
Methods:
Method A systematic search was performed on three sources: we searched Internet for initiatives that worked on trustworthiness of medical information, Medline (Pubmed) till June 2019 for relevant literature and, we scanned reference lists and lists of citing papers via Web of Science for each retrieved paper. We included all studies, reports, websites, or methodologies that reported on tools to assess the trustworthiness of medical information for professionals. From the selected studies, we extracted information on the general characteristics of the tool. As no standard risk of bias assessment instruments are available for these type of studies, we described how each tool was developed, including any assessments on reliability and validity. We analyzed the criteria used in the different tools and divided them in five categories: (1) author-related information; (2) evidence-based methodology; (3) website quality; (4) website design and usability; (5) website interactivity. The percentage of tools in compliance with these categories and the different criteria was calculated.
Results:
Seventeen tools were included, all published between 1997 and 2018. The tools were developed for different purposes: from general quality assessment of medical information to very detailed analyses, specifically for point-of-care resources. The development process of the tools was poorly described. Seven tools had a scoring system implemented, two were assessed for reliability only and two other tools were assessed for both validity and reliability. The content analysis showed that all tools assessed criteria related to an evidence-based methodology. Eighty-two percent of the tools assessed author related information. Seventy-one percent assessed criteria related to website quality and 71% assessed criteria related to website design and usability. Forty-seven percent of the tools assessed criteria related to website interactivity. There was large variability in criteria used: some were very detailed while others were broader defined.
Conclusions:
The 17 included tools encompass a variety of items important for assessment of trustworthiness of point-of-care information. Two tools were assessed for both reliability and validity, but they lacked some essential criteria for assessment of trustworthiness of medical information for use at the point-of-care. Apparently, a standard, validated tool is currently non-existing. The results of this review may contribute to the development of an instrument, which may enhance the quality of point-of-care information on the longer term. Clinical Trial: The protocol of this review was registered at PROSPERO (CRD42019122565).
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Copyright
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