Critical Appraisal Skills Programme

Useful Links

On this page are links to recommended websites, organisations and resources, relating to evidence-based healthcare, statistics and research.

If you know of a useful resource or website, that is not covered below, please contact us and we’ll see if we can add it to our list.

Trip Database

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. Trip has been online since 1997 and in that time has developed into the internet’s premier source of evidence-based content. Their motto is ‘Find evidence fast’.

As well as research evidence Trip also allows clinicians to search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news.

*NEW* -a free CASP app where you can get TRIP easily on your mobile phone

A mobile app called BestEvidence that enables users to get access to the best available evidence at the time it is needed. It works by accessing the TRIP database which searches many resources, including PubMed and the Cochrane Library. A special free CASP version of BestEvidence is available. To get this on your mobile phone open the web browser on your phone and go to www.BestEvidence.Info which will take you to the page where you can register an account. (BestEvidence can also be used on a table or desktop computer.) To get the BestEvidence icon to appear on your phone (so that you don’t have to go to your web browser every time) simple select “Add to home screen” from the browser’s menu so that it works like any other app.

Risky Talk

Risky Talk features conversations with the world’s top experts in risk and evidence communication addressing urgent, practical challenges: How can doctors communicate the risks and benefits of medical treatment? How should scientists communicate evidence about climate change? How can journalists make numbers meaningful to readers? How should government institutions convey important statistics?

Hosted by David Spiegelhalter

Produced by Ilan Goodman for the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge.

National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools (NCCMT)

Understanding Research Evidence (11 Videos)

Understanding and interpreting research evidence is an important part of practicing evidence-informed public health. You need to understand some basic concepts. This series of short videos explains some important terms that you are likely to encounter when looking at research evidence.

  • What’s the Risk? Understanding Absolute and Relative Risk Reduction
  • Relative Risk: It’s easy to calculate and interpret
  • Effectiveness of Interventions – Understanding the Number Needed to Treat
  • Types of Reviews What kind of review do we need?
  • How to Calculate an Odds Ratio
  • Understanding a Confidence Interval
  • Forest Plots: Understanding a Meta-Analysis in 5 Minutes or Less
  • The Importance of Clinical Significance
  • Evidence-Informed Decision Making: A guiding framework for public health
  • 6S Pyramid: a tool that helps you find evidence quickly and efficiently
  • Making Sense of a Standardized Mean Difference

National Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools – McMaster University, Canada

National Elf Service
The National Elf Service is a collection of evidence-based websites aimed at health and social care professionals. The sites help busy people keep up to date with the latest reliable research. They do this by finding high quality research, critically appraising it and asking subject experts to summarise it in simple and clear blogs.
Understanding Health Research

Understanding Health Research is a tool designed to help people understand and review published health research to decide how dependable and relevant a piece of research is. The tool was developed by researchers at MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow, in collaboration with two other MRC Units and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

NHS Choices
Information from the National Health Service on conditions, treatments, local services and healthy living.
Evidently Cochrane

Evidently Cochrane aims to make Cochrane evidence really accessible, and to encourage discussion about it, through weekly blogs, which usually feature new or updated Cochrane reviews on a health topic. It is for everyone who is interested in finding and using the best quality evidence to inform decisions about health.

The Ecran Project
The ECRAN Project aims to make understanding clinical trials – a relevant element of medical research – easy, and tells you all about taking part in them. There is also a really good short video explaining the basics of a RCT.
CONSORT

CONSORT stands for Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials and encompasses various initiatives developed by the CONSORT Group to alleviate the problems arising from inadequate reporting of randomized controlled trials.

3ie
3ie funds impact evaluations and systematic reviews that generate evidence on what works in development programmes and why. Evidence on development effectiveness can inform policy and improve lives of the poor. 3ie is a US non-profit organization with an office in Washington, and programmes operating in Delhi and London under the auspices of the Global Development Network and London International Development Centre, respectively.
Open Access Button
The Open Access Button is a browser bookmarklet which registers when people hit a paywall to an academic article and cannot access it.
COMET
The COMET (Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials) Initiative brings together people interested in the development and application of agreed standardised sets of outcomes, known as ‘core outcome sets’. These sets represent the minimum that should be measured and reported in all clinical trials of a specific condition, and are also suitable for use in clinical audit or research other than randomised trials.
Cochrane Library

The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about groups in The Cochrane Collaboration.

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Quick summaries of evidence-based medicine. A group of physicians that have developed a framework and rating system to evaluate therapies based on their patient-important benefits and harms as well as a system to evaluate diagnostics by patient sign, symptom, lab test or study. They only use the highest quality, evidence-based studies (frequently, but not always Cochrane Reviews), and accept no outside funding or advertisements.

Students 4 Best Evidence
Students 4 Best Evidence (S4BE) is a growing network of students from around the world, from school age to university, who are interested in learning more about evidence-based healthcare (EBH).
Testing Treatments Interactive
This website is about how we tell whether one treatment is better than another. In other words, it’s about what constitutes a “fair test” of the effects of treatments.
All Trials
The AllTrials campaign was launched in January 2013 and calls for all past and present clinical trials to be registered and their results reported. The campaign has published a detailed plan on how all clinical trials can be registered and all results reported.
Equator Network
The EQUATOR Network promotes the development and dissemination of guidelines for the transparent reporting of health research.
Sense About Science
A charitable trust that equips people to make sense of scientific and medical claims in public discussion.
Dr Chris Cates’ EBM Web Site

Visual Rx is free software to convert Odds Ratios into Numbers Needed to Treat. This was designed to help with the interpretation of results from Systematic Reviews and clinical trials by producing a graphical display demonstrating the impact of treatment if it were given to 100 people with the relevant condition. Other pages on this site link to a series of articles written for Update and Prescriber and Doctor on understanding statistics and critical appraisal and a variety of prescribing issues. Also a Bibliography of some books helpful for those who want to read more.

SIGN
The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) develops evidence based clinical practice guidelines for the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland.
CEBM
CEBM aims to develop, teach and promote evidence-based health care through conferences, workshops and EBM tools so that all health care professionals can maintain the highest standards of medicine.
Agree
The Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation (AGREE) Instrument evaluates the process of practice guideline development and the quality of reporting.
The BMJ – How to Read a Paper
On this page you will find links to articles in the BMJ that explain how to read and interpret different kinds of research papers.
BestEvidence

Want to get high quality research evidence to inform your health decisions quickly?

Professor Amanda Burls, a former director of the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, has produced a mobile app called BestEvidence that enables users to get access to the best available evidence at the time it is needed. It works by accessing the TRIP database which searches many resources, including PubMed and the Cochrane Library. A special free CASP version of BestEvidence is available. To get this on your mobile phone open the web browser on your phone and go to www.BestEvidence.Info which will take you to the page where you can register an account. (BestEvidence can also be used on a table or desktop computer.) To get the BestEvidence icon to appear on your phone (so that you don’t have to go to your web browser every time) simple select “Add to home screen” from the browser’s menu so that it works like any other app.

We hope you find this useful. CASP checklists will be added to the notes section of the app over the coming months. We welcome feedback so if you have any problems, feedback or ideas for additional functionality, please email us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.


Need more information?

If you have a general query about the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, or would like to book on to a workshop please get in touch.
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