Research integrity is guided by a set of principles to ensure research reliability, and rigor. It serves as a pillar to uphold society’s trust in science and foster scientific progress. However, over the past two decades, a surge in research integrity concerns, including fraudulent research, reproducibility challenges, and questionable practices, has raised critical questions about the reliability of scientific outputs, particularly in biomedical research. In the biomedical sciences, any breaches in research integrity could potentially lead to a domino effect impacting patient care, medical in ..read more

One study published in this month's issue of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology and found in our special series on COVID-19 looked at externally validating six prognostic models for predicting mortality in population cohorts of older adults with COVID [1]. Zahra et al. [1] selected six models after assessing all COVID prognostic models for mortality to identify those with a low or uncertain risk of bias using the Prediction model Risk Of Bias ASsessment Tool (or PROBAST) [2]. The PROBAST assesses the applicability and risk of bias of studies that conduct diagnostic and prognostic predic ..read more

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Actively addressing issues of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in healthcare guidelines provides an important avenue ensure that individuals and communities receive high-quality health care that meets their needs. In 2020, the National Clinical Evidence Taskforce was charged with developing Australian living guidelines for COVID-19 (the Guidelines). It was intended that the Guidelines would consider the biological and social determinants of health underpinning evidence-based recommendations for of the treatment of COVID-19 ..read more

To develop a framework to identify and evaluate spin practices and its facilitators in studies on clinical prediction model, regardless of the modelling technique ..read more

To identify the patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) used in clinical trials assessing interventions for chronic pain, describe their psychometric properties and the clinical domains they cover ..read more

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To investigate the frequency, determinants, stages, and barriers of patient and public involvement (PPI) in systematic reviews, and to explore its association with the dissemination of reviews ..read more

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Prognostic models provide an avenue to predict the risk of individual patients and support shared-decision making. Many prognostic models are published annually, and systematic reviews provide an avenue to collate the existing evidence behind prognostic models to determine whether a model demonstrates adequate predictive performance and is ready for real-world use. This article provides a brief step-by-step guide on how to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of prognostic model studies and how these reviews differ from systematic reviews of therapy and diagnosis ..read more