Taking healthcare interventions from trial to practice

Paul Glasziou, University of Oxford
Iain Chalmers, James Lind Initiative
Douglas G. Altman, Centre for Statistics in Medicine
Hilda Bastian, German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care
Isabelle Boutron, Universite Paris
Anne Brice, University of Oxford
Gro Jamtvedt, Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services
Andrew Farmer, University of Oxford
Davina Ghersi, World Health Organization
Trish Groves, BMJ
Carl Heneghan, University of Oxford
Sophie Hill, La Trobe University
Simon Lewin, Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services
Susan Michie, University College London
Rafael Perera, University of Oxford
Valerie Pomeroy, University of East Anglia
Julie Tilson, University of Southern California
Sasha Shepperd, University of Oxford
John W. Williams, Duke University and Durham VA Medical Center

Article comments

Published Version.

Glasziou, P., Chalmers, I., Altman, D. G., Bastian, H., Boutron, I., Brice, A., Jamtvedt, G., Farmer, A., Ghersi, D., Groves, T., Heneghan, C., Hill, S., Lewin, S., Michie, S., Perera, R., Pomeroy, V., Tilson, J., Shepperd, S., & Williams, J. W. (2010). Taking healthcare interventions from trial to practice. BMJ, 341(c3852 ), 384-387.

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Abstract

Extract:
The results of thousands of trials are never acted on because their published reports do not describe the interventions in enough detail. How can we improve the reporting?

Much healthcare research is currently wasted because its findings are unusable.¹ Published reports of intervention trials often focus on the results and fail to describe interventions adequately. For example, a review of 80 studies selected for the journal Evidence Based Medicine as both valid and important for clinical practice found that clinicians could replicate the intervention in only half the studies.² Interventions may be used incorrectly or not at all if there is inadequate detail in the trial protocol, on the conduct of the trial, in systematic reviews and guidelines, and finally during implementation (fig 1⇓). This is an unnecessary but remediable waste, as we discuss below.