Technologies

Description

GRADEprofiler (GRADEpro)is a computer software application to create, manage and share summaries of research evidence (called evidence profiles and Summary of Findings Tables). These tables are often used to summarise the evidence from systematic reviews (for example, Cochrane systematic reviews) or summarise evidence from a body of research to be used when making recommendations for practice (for example, in guideline develoment). The tables presents key information about all relevant outcomes for a given health care question, such as the body of evidence (e.g. number of studies), the judgments about the underlying quality of evidence, key statistical results, and a grade for the quality of evidence for each outcome.

This tool is intended for:

• authors of systematic reviews
• guideline developers
• those requiring summaries of the best available evidence for recommendations about particular courses of action in health care.

Authors of systematic reviewsCochrane review authors can create Summary of Findings (SoF) table using GRADEpro. It can retrieve data from a systematic review and meta-analyses from a Review Manager 5 file, combine these data with user-entered data, and then export a Summary of Findings table ready for import into Review Manager 5. It performs many of the calculations necessary to present the key results of systematic reviews in a table format and guides users through the process of grading the quality of the evidence using the GRADE approach.

Guideline developersGuideline developers will likely need to summarise evidence from a variety of sources, not just from Cochane systematic reviews. If data from a Cochrane Reveiw Manager file is not available, guideline developers will need to enter data manually. GRADEpro provides help (in an extensive HELP section) and guidance to create a GRADE evidence profile.

Background

Through the GRADE approach a standard, consistent format for presenting research evidence has been developed. Evidence can be presented in GRADE Evidence Profiles or Summary of Findings Tables. The GRADEprofiler, has been developed to create profiles and tables.