The amount of new information produced by biomedical research has presently reached such proportions that it has made more complex for the health operator to evaluate and make proper decisions in the health and clinical environment. The adoption of summarizing (text-mining) tools has become a necessity in order to guarantee the accessibility and the utilization of scientific information.
As a consequence, the availability of tools for the analysis and the evaluation of pertinent literature becomes fundamental. These tools are as necessary in the decision-making process and the action-taking of the operators, as their ability to deliver quality information and appropriate and effective summaries.
The necessity of medical services based on tests of effectiveness, equality of access to high quality services for all users, has found breath in the PSN 1998-2000, and has found inspiration in one of its stronger ideas, that of “Promoting the appropriate use of medical services” and “diminishing disparities when it comes to health.” Thus the objective of the PNS to start “a national program for the processing, propagation and validation of guidelines and of processes for diagnosis and therapy,” entrusting the ISS and the Agency for Regional Health Services with carrying out the program, with the intent to overcome on a national level the organizational issues and the knowledge gaps.
The stages to produce behavioral recommendations starting from primary research, are essentially laid out as follows:
- determination of the topics on the basis of clinical epidemiological priorities
- determination of exhaustive primary sources vased on specific criteria
- evaluation of the quality of the studies, rendered through different evidence levels
- evaluation, in a multidisciplinary group, of the scientific evidence to give practical answers, compatible with the knowledge, and that take into account the viewpoints of all the operators
- making explicit the strength of the recommendations on the basis of the available evidence, and the forcast of the benefits that are hoped for.
The adjustment of the health-organizational behavior to the available evidence can be carried out through guidelines, a real tool suited not only for the scientific divulgation, but built to reduce the variability of the clinical behavior, thus incorporating in the recommendations the different necessities of the operators, of the administrative staff, and of the citizens/patients.
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