Monash researcher leads drive to better manage global research ‘deluge’

A/Prof Julian Elliott speaking at the Commonwealth
Health Minister's award function in June 2017

by Anne Crawford

For some 30 years, international literature about medical and scientific research topics worldwide has been critically reviewed, summarised and distilled for all to use in what are called ‘systematic reviews’. But with an exponential growth in research, about 7% of these reviews are out-of-date on the day they’re published as the field has moved on, while 25% are out-of-date within two years.

Head of Clinical Research in the Department of Infectious Diseases, Associate Professor Julian Elliott, is behind a push for a better model to make sense of this “data deluge”. He and his team are trialing what he has termed ‘living systematic reviews’ (LSR), enlisting methods including online platforms, artificial intelligence and ‘citizen science’ to improve efficiency in the production of the reviews.

Improving quality information flow to medical practitioners: Living Systematic Review

Current and emerging health
knowledge ecosystems

Medical research output is doubling every five to seven years. The great boon of this body of work is its potential for dramatically improving  understanding of disease processes and treatment protocols. The curse is that busy practitioners who need comprehensive overviews of their field, don't have time to read everything. Systematic reviews analyse all the data for a given subject area, but are slow to complete because of the volume of material and rigour required. For the first time, a new process, called a living systematic review (LSR), has been proposed by a group of Monash University clinician-researchers based at the Alfred Hospital.