Critically appraised topic (CAT)
A short summary of an article from the literature, created to answer a specific clinical question.
Glossary
Decision analysis
The application of explicit, quantitative methods to analyse decisions under conditions of uncertainty.
Diagnosis
The process of determining health status and the factors responsible for producing it, and may be applied to an individual, family, group or community. The term applied both to the process of determination and to its findings.
Diagnostic Test
Any medical test performed to confirm, or determine the presence of disease in an individual suspected of having the disease, usually following the report of symptoms, or based on the results of other medical tests. Some examples of diagnostic tests include performing a chest x-ray to diagnose pneumonia, and taking skin biopsy to detect cancerous cells. (Harvard Guide to Diagnostic test)
DOAJ
DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals
DOOs (Disease-Oriented Outcomes)
DOOs refers to the outcomes of studies that measure physiologic or surrogate markers of health. This would include things such as blood pressure, serum creatinine, glycohaemoglobin, sensitivity and specificity, or peak flow. Improvements in these outcomes do not always lead to improvements in patient-oriented outcomes (POOs), such as symptoms, morbidity, quality of life, or mortality, which are the type of outcomes patients care more about. Any POO evidence that would change practice is a POEM (patient-oriented evidence that matters).
EER
Experimental event rate (see event rate).
Effectiveness
A measure of the benefit resulting from an intervention for a given health problem under usual conditions of clinical care, for a particular group.
Efficacy
A measure of the benefit resulting from an intervention for a given health problem under the ideal conditions of an investigation.
EMBASE
A biomedical and pharmacological database with good Western European source coverage, and therefore complementary to Medline. The emphasis is on the pharmacological effects of drugs and chemicals. Covers the years 1980 to present and is updated daily.
EMIS reference aka Mentor
Accessible via EMIS. This is an on-line system for searching and displaying the full contents of EMIS medical reference publications.
Evaluative
Adjective to describe activity that assesses relevance, effectiveness, and consequences.