Knowledge Matters Newsletter

PubMed comprises more than 22 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS) https://hdas.nice.org.uk/

Includes Medline, Embase and CINAHL. You can find journal articles, linked to full text papers where possible. An NHS England OpenAthens account is needed to access these databases.

Video tutorials and help guides are available to help users conduct searches. LHCH staff can also contact the Library & Knowledge Service for further assistance.

Evidence https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/

NICE Evidence search finds selected, authoritative evidence in health, social care and public health.

TRIP https://www.tripdatabase.com/

Trip is a clinical search engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care. Their motto is ‘Find evidence fast’. As well as research evidence they also allow clinicians to search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news.

CORE https://core.ac.uk/

The mission of CORE is to aggregate all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public.

ERIC http://eric.ed.gov/

ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) is the world’s largest educational database providing free access to more than 1.2 million bibliographic records of journal articles and other education-related materials including medical education.

PEDro http://www.pedro.org.au/

PEDro is the Physiotherapy Evidence Database. PEDro is a free database of over 32,000 randomised trials, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines in physiotherapy. For each trial, review or guideline, PEDro provides the citation details, the abstract and a link to the full text, where possible.

Proquest http://search.proquest.com/athens

NOTE: select "NHS England" as your institution from the drop-down list

ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company has forged a 70-year reputation as a gateway to the world’s knowledge – from dissertations to governmental and cultural archives to news, in all its forms. Its role is essential to libraries and other organizations whose missions depend on the delivery of complete, trustworthy information.

Proquest NHS support page available here.

Social Care Online http://www.scie-socialcareonline.org.uk/

Social Care Online is the UK's largest database of information and research on all aspects of social care and social work. Updated daily resources include legislation, government documents, practice and guidance, systematic reviews, research briefings, reports, journal articles and websites. Every resource listed includes an abstract. Links to full text are also included where available. Social Care Online is a particularly useful resource for staff, students and researchers working in social work and social care.

OTseeker http://www.otseeker.com/

OTseeker is a database that contains abstracts of systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials and other resources relevant to occupational therapy interventions.

Evidence Based Answers & Policies

BestBets http://www.bestbets.org/

BestBETs is a freely accessible website that provides access to the best current evidence on a wide range of real-life clinical questions and clinical topics allowing physicians to make the best of what there is. Although BETs initially had an emergency medicine focus, there are a significant number of BETs covering cardiothoracic, nursing etc.

Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) http://cks.nice.org.uk/

CKS are a practical up-to-date evidence-based source of clinical knowledge providing concise readily accessible summaries on how to manage over 300 common and/or significant primary care presentations.

Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs) https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cca

Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs) provide a readable, digestible, clinically-focused entry point to rigorous research from Cochrane Reviews. They are designed to be actionable and to inform point-of-care decision-making. Each CCA contains a clinical question, a short answer, and data for the outcomes from the Cochrane Review deemed most relevant to practising healthcare professionals, our target audience.

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR)

https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/reviews/topics

The CDSR includes all Cochrane Reviews (and protocols) prepared by Cochrane Review Groups. Each Cochrane Review is a systematic review that has been prepared and supervised by a Cochrane Review Group (editorial team). It attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a specific research question. Researchers conducting systematic reviews use explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view aimed at minimizing bias, to produce more reliable findings to inform decision-making

UpToDate® http://www.uptodate.com/home

LHCH staff can access UpToDate® via the LHCH Intranet. You can then complete a registration form to enable you to access it at home.

UpToDate® is an evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource which clinicians trust to make the right point-of-care decisions. More than 5,100 world-renowned physician authors, editors and peer reviewers use a rigorous editorial process to synthesize the most recent medical information into trusted, evidence-based recommendations that are proven to improve patient care and quality.

Access UpToDate® on the move using their new mobile Apps, available on Apple iOS and Android.

The Campbell Collaboration https://www.campbellcollaboration.org/

The Campbell Collaboration is an international social science research network that produces high quality, open and policy-relevant evidence syntheses, plain language summaries and policy briefs.

Office of Health Economics https://www.ohe.org/

Conducts research and provides consultancy services on health economics and related policy issues that affect health care and the life sciences industries.

Trials Registries & Registers

A clinical trials registry is an official platform for registering a clinical trial. Some countries require clinical trials being conducted in that country to be registered, other do not require it, but often strongly encourage it.

A clinical trials register stores information on registered trials (but not used for registering a trial).

ClinicalTrials.gov https://clinicaltrials.gov/

A registry and results database of publicly and privately supported clinical studies of human participants conducted around the world. Run by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) it was the first online registry for clinical trials and is the largest and most widely used today. Clinicaltrials.gov is the largest clinical trials registry and holds about 150,000 trials from more than 175 countries.

ISRCTN Registry http://www.isrctn.com/

The ISRCTN is a simple numeric system for the unique identification of randomised controlled trials worldwide. The ISRCTN Register is a register containing a basic set of data items on clinical trials that have been assigned an ISRCTN. Records are never removed from the ISRCTN Register (except in cases of duplications), which ensures that basic information about trials registered with an ISRCTN will always be available.

WHO International Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) http://apps.who.int/trialsearch/

The ICTRP Search Portal aims to provide a single point of access to information about ongoing and completed clinical trials. It provides a searchable database containing the trial registration data sets made available by data providers around the world.

Data providers contributing to the ICTRP are listed here.

EU Clinical Trials Register https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search

The EU Clinical Trials Register website provides the public with information held in the EU clinical trial database, EudraCT. EudraCT is used by national medicine regulatory authorities to support supervision of clinical trials and was established as a confidential database, in accordance with article 11 of Directive 2001/20/EC. EU pharmaceutical legislation requires the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which maintains the EudraCT database on behalf of EU member states to provide information held in EudraCT to the public.

UKCRN Portfolio Database https://www.accord.scot/researcher-access-registration-and-reporting/ukcrn-portfolio-database

The database holds records of all research ongoing in the UK that is eligible for the UKCRN Portfolio. In Scotland, studies funded by eligible funders are entered.

CENTRAL

Cardiology Trials http://cardiologytrials.org/

Cardiology Trials is an unofficial list of Cardiology trials collated by Dr James Howard.

Repositories

OpenDOAR http://www.opendoar.org/

OpenDOAR (The Directory of Open Access Repositories) is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded here.

Grey Literature

EThOS http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do

EThOS aims to demonstrate the quality of UK research by making UK doctoral theses discoverable and openly available online. More information here.

OpenGrey http://www.opengrey.eu/

System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe, is your open access to 700.000 bibliographical references of grey literature (paper) produced in Europe and allows you to export records and locate the documents.

Wellcome Library http://wellcomelibrary.org/

Wellcome Library releases over 100,000 historical images online. Over 100,000 images ranging from ancient medical manuscripts to etchings by artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Francisco Goya are now available for free download as hi-res images on the Welcome Library website. The images are being released under the Creative Commons-Attribution only (CC-BY) licence.

Electronic Journals

Evidence

LHCH Journal Subscriptions

Electronic Books

Evidence

Statistics and Data

UK Data Service https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/get-data/key-data

The UK Data Service collection includes major UK government-sponsored surveys, cross-national surveys, longitudinal studies, UK census data, international aggregate, business data, and qualitative data.

Patient Safety Data http://www.nrls.npsa.nhs.uk/patient-safety-data/

Find out how many incidents were recorded.

Office for National Statistics http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/index.html

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics and is the recognised national statistical institute for the UK. It is responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the economy, population and society at national, regional and local levels. It also conducts the census in England and Wales every ten years.

Medicines

Electronic Medicines Compendium (eMC) http://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/

eMC is a free resource containing up to date, easily accessible information about medicines licensed for use in the UK. Has more than 6,000 documents, all of which have been checked and approved by either the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) or the European Medicines Agency (EMEA).

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) http://www.mhra.gov.uk/index.htm#page=DynamicListMedicines

The regulatory body for all research using drugs or medical devices.

Referencing Guides

University of Liverpool

Liverpool John Moores University

Liverpool Hope University

Edge Hill University

BMA Referencing Styles

Writing & Publishing

BMC Writing Resources https://www.biomedcentral.com/getpublished/writing-resources

EQUATOR Network http://www.equator-network.org/

The EQUATOR Network works to improve the reliability and value of medical research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting of research studies.

Key reporting guidelines including CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA here.

Toolkits for research authors, editors and guideline developers here.

Writing Center http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/

The Writing Center is an instructional service that provides writing assistance for students, faculty, and staff at The University of North Carolina (USA).Their handouts can be referred to for general information and cover topics such as statistics, abstract and grant proposals.