Crowd-sourcing the identification of rehabilitation-relevant review: a Cochrane Rehabilitation initiative

Session: 

Oral session: Knowledge translation and communicating evidence (7)

Date: 

Tuesday 18 September 2018 - 14:50 to 15:10

Location: 

Ochil 2

All authors in correct order:

Levack W1, Negrini S2, Rathore F3, Pollet J2
1 University of Otago, New Zealand
2 University of Brescia, Italy
3 Bahria University Medical and Dental College, Pakistan
Presenting author and contact person

Presenting author:

Stefano Negrini

Contact person:

William Levack
Abstract text
Background:
Cochrane Rehabilitation is a new Field within the Cochrane community which has a goal of disseminating rehabilitation-relevant evidence from the Cochrane Library to our global community. Currently, the Cochrane Library does not have a method for the identification of rehabilitation-relevant reviews. Instead, identification of these reviews has to be completed by hand.

Objectives:
To use crowd-sourcing for the purposes of identification and categorisation of rehabilitation-relevant reviews in the Cochrane Library.

Methods:
We examined current methods for crowd-sourcing information within Cochrane (such as Cochrane Crowd) and found no tools that could be used to achieve our objective. Therefore, we created an online database, using a web-based application called 'Knack'. Titles and abstracts of all Cochrane Reviews were entered into this database, along with fields to identify rehabilitation-relevant reviews, and to categorise these based on professional groups and clinical areas of practice. We created a membership log-in system to allow many people to access the database concurrently. We set up the database so that two members (one physician and one allied health professional) had to categorise each review independently based on prespecified criteria. We recruited rehabilitation experts from our community to contribute to this work. All final decisions regarding categorisations were reviewed by our project committee, with adjudication of differences of opinion where required.

Results:
We recruited 49 health professionals, who contributed at varying levels to this work. To date, a third of all Cochrane Reviews have each been evaluated by two members of our group. We have adjudicated all reviews published between 2016 and 2017, and have published the results on the Cochrane Rehabilitation website. We continue to face challenges regarding what constitutes a ‘rehabilitation-relevant’ review partly because the scope of practice of rehabilitation varies internationally.

Conclusions:
We have developed a successful strategy for crowd-sourcing expert identification and categorisation of rehabilitation-relevant reviews. We plan to use the outcomes of this work to inform other Cochrane Rehabilitation activities, including an open-access eBook on evidence-based rehabilitation to be published in 2019.

Relevance to patients and consumers: 

Cochrane Rehabilitation is a Field within Cochrane that focuses on connecting stakeholders in rehabilitation to the Cochrane Community. In this context, 'stakeholders' refers to rehabilitation researchers, funders and providers of rehabilitation, and people who make use of rehabilitation services. This presentation describes one aspect of Cochrane Rehabilitation's work: the identification of evidence in the Cochrane Library that is relevant to the work of rehabilitation.