Is the GRADE framework evidence based?

Is the GRADE framework evidence based?

In this week's open access journal PLoS Medicine, Brian Kavanagh (Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada) critiques the GRADE system of grading guidelines, arguing that even though it has evolved through the Evidence-Based Medicine movement, there is no evidence that GRADE itself is reliable. This paper is debated in a related Perspective by Mohammed Ansari and colleagues from the University of Ottawa.

Citation: Kavanagh BP (2009) The GRADE System for Rating Clinical Guidelines. PLoS Med 6(9): e1000094.doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000094

International collaborations key to evaluating eHealth

This week the open access journal PLoS Medicine continues its series on evaluating eHealth with an article by David Bates and Adam Wright (Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA) that discusses the opportunities and challenges of undertaking international collaborations in eHealth evaluation research. They recommend that international eHealth collaborations become much more frequent, and that more knowledge generation and data interchange are needed. Last month, in the first article the PLoS Medicine series on evaluating eHealth, Aziz Sheikh and Lorraine Catwell from the University of Edinburgh discussed the importance of evaluating the widespread investments in and adoption of information communication technology in health care.

Citation: Bates DW, Wright A (2009) Evaluating eHealth: Undertaking Robust International Cross-Cultural eHealth Research. PLoS Med 6(9): e1000105. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000105

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000105