The National Library of Medicine has just made it easier to find reviews on clinical effectiveness research and provide easy-to-read summaries of this research for consumers with PubMed Health.

Clinical effectiveness research is sometimes referred to as patient-centered outcomes or patient-centered research. Basically, it’s conducting research and determining the most clinically proven results for a condition by weighing all the possible evidence. This leads to informed decision-making and more targeted patient care. Research and studies like clinical trials and systematic review publications are considered some of the highest forms of evidence and weighed heavily in making information healthcare decisions.

PubMed Health takes all these evidence-based studies and synthesizes the results into summaries for lay people (aka consumers) to easily understand. The resource also provides useful information for healthcare providers such as related guidelines, executive summaries, and full text review articles. PubMed Health searches all the NLM systematic review content for the categories shown on the results page (i.e. FOR CONSUMERS, CLINICAL GUIDES, EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES, FULL TEXT REVIEWS, etc.). This ensures that all the information found in PubMed Health comes from one of the highest forms of evidence, systematic review publications.

For more detailed information on the systematic review process, what systematic reviews are, and how to request a systematic review methodology search from a reference librarian, please visit the Systematic Review LibGuide.