From 2005 to 2007, NICS undertook a project funded by the Department of Health and Ageing to evaluate uptake, use and perceptions of the online version of BMJ Clinical Evidence, a resource published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ). This project is part of our work to investigate and support the wider availability of high quality evidence-based resources.
Clinical Evidence is a compendium of evidence on the effects of clinical interventions. The print version is updated twice a year and the web version is updated every month. Clinical Evidence summarises the current state of knowledge about the prevention and treatment of a number of clinical conditions, based on thorough searches and appraisal of the literature.
Evaluating Clinical Evidence
The Clinical Evidence project gave Australian GPs an opportunity to access this resource online, while allowing NICS to evaluate its uptake and perceived usefulness. We focused on investigating the factors that might improve uptake of the offer, use and GPs’ perceptions of the resource.
The project started in early 2006, with 14,000 randomly selected GPs across Australia being offered free access to Clinical Evidence for two years on a trial basis. The main study was a randomised controlled trial, with all the selected GPs being allocated to one of seven different intervention groups (2000 per group) to evaluate the uptake of the two year free offer.
The project was approved by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners' Research Ethics and Evaluation Committee and the Monash University Standing Committee on Ethics in Research Involving Humans.
A project report will be published shortly.
