Evidence-based Healthcare

Study Help: Evidence-based Healthcare

Evidence-based healthcare is a way of providing health care that is guided by a thoughtful integration of the best available scientific knowledge with clinical expertise and a patient’s values and preferences in making health care decisions. Evidence-based healthcare requires practitioners to critically evaluate research data, clinical guidelines, and other information resources in order to correctly identify the clinical problem, apply the most high-quality intervention, and re-evaluate the outcome for future improvement .

Evidence-based healthcare is based on the concept of evidence-based medicine (EBM), which refers to the application of the best available research to clinical care. EBM involves the use of evidence hierarchies as a guide in clinical decision making, as well as the integration of individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research. EBM also helps us understand how trustworthy evidence is, and why evidence, on its own, is never sufficient to make a clinical decision.

Evidence-based healthcare can be especially challenging for genetic or genomic-based topics, as they often need to bring together information on analytic validity, clinical validity, clinical utility, ethical, legal, and social implications, and other contextual issues. Analytic validity refers to the ability of a test to accurately and reliably detect the genotype of interest, while clinical validity refers to the ability of a test to detect or predict the clinical disorder or phenotype of interest. Clinical utility refers to the influence of a test on health outcomes, and the risks versus benefits of introducing a test in practice.

Evidence-based healthcare can benefit patients, clinicians, and health systems by improving the quality, safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of health care delivery. Evidence-based healthcare can also reduce unnecessary variations in practice, promote patient-centered care, and inform health policy decisions .

References:

: Dotson WD. Evidence-Based Practice: What It Is and Why It Matters. Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services. 2016. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/about/file/print/Evidence-Based_Practice_508.pdf

: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Evidence-Based Practice. 2020. Available from: https://www.ahrq.gov/topics/evidence-based-practice.html

: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Evidence-Based Decisionmaking. 2019. Available from: https://www.ahrq.gov/prevention/chronic-care/decision/index.html

: USC Online. What Is Evidence-Based Practice in Health Care Dissertation? 2020. Available from: https://healthadministrationdegree.usc.edu/blog/what-is-evidence-based-practice

: BMJ Best Practice. What is EBM? 2020. Available from: https://bestpractice.bmj.com/info/toolkit/learn-ebm/what-is-ebm/