Part 3: Ideas to give you time

Of the 8 barriers identified by the Medical Library Association, time was deemed to be the most important.¹ We are sure most of you would agree. The stats certainly do. On average, healthcare professionals in the US already work 50 hour weeks.² Despite this over one-third of them still wish they had 50% more time with patients.³ What time does that leave for consulting the literature? For evidence-based medicine? Not much.

Interestingly though, in a survey from Doximiy 98% of physicians reported reading medical literature is important or very important to their practice.⁴ This tells us the desire and motivation is there, unfortunately, the time isn’t.

To compound the problem further, the amount of literature to comb through is increasing. As we discussed in the previous article, COVID-19 has brought with it a drastic increase in the quantity of literature published.⁵ Unfortunately, without necessarily maintaining the quality.⁶ What does all this mean? Less time to comb through more literature. Literature that requires more time to establish if it’s reliable or not.

There is cause for hope. The industry is taking action and we’ve identified three areas of hope that can save you time.

1. COVID-END (COVID-19 Evidence Network to support Decision-making) — This network brings together more than 50 of the world’s leading evidence-synthesis*, technology-assessment and guideline-development groups around the world. They plan to deliver two services; ‘Spotlights’ that will share the best living evidence syntheses, and ‘Horizon Scans’ that capture related insights from the group’s leading panel. Essentially, they plan to collate the best and most current research with expert commentary.⁷ Currently focused on COVID but the idea is an exciting one.
2. Living systematic reviews — not a new idea but one that feels like an increasingly good one. The idea is simply to create reviews that are updated monthly. The pioneers of evidence-based medicine, the Cochrane society, have been leading the way with the aim to produce evidence that is both trustworthy and current.⁸
3. Technology — perhaps the obvious point, but increases in technology have gone a long way to making our first two points possible, and a lot more besides. Not least, Read by QxMD. Designed to give you more time. We’ve developed technology that means less time searching, less time accessing, and less time sharing and discussing literature. Users are delivered a bespoke newsfeed of relevant content as soon as they open up the app. They are sent push notifications or updates to key search terms, collections, journals and more. Essentially, your own personalized journal with one-tap access to full-text publications. Whether they are free or through your institution’s integrated subscriptions.

Ironically, this article has been the longest in the series. We hope you will forgive us, it’s a subject we are passionate about. Speaking of which, keep a lookout for the next article in the series. We will discuss why finance shouldn’t be a barrier to keeping on top of medical literature.

*evidence synthesis — interpretation of individual studies within the context of global knowledge

1. https://read.qxmd.com/read/33424474/
2. https://read.qxmd.com/read/34160608/
3. https://physiciansfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Physicians_Foundation_2012_Biennial_Survey.pdf
4. https://blog.doximity.com/articles/how-do-doctors-keep-up-with-the-latest-literature#:~:text=To%20recap%20our%20findings%20from,very%20important%20to%20their%20practice
5. https://read.qxmd.com/read/32904414/
6. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01246-x
7. https://www.mcmasterforum.org/networks/covid-end
8. https://community.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/uploads/inline-files/Transform/201905%20LSR_pilot_evaluation_report.pdf