Evidence Synthesis Group at the Complex Reviews Support Unit (CRSU)

Evidence synthesis has proven to be a useful tool to inform healthcare decision-making. As medical and health sciences continue to advance, the decisions relating to prevention and management of ill health and wellbeing, are increasingly complex. Stakeholders require evidence outputs that are relevant to their context. This could range from rapid reviews without quantitative analysis to complex living systematic reviews that require the adoption of novel and sophisticated methodological approaches in identifying and synthesising different types of data. Our Evidence Synthesis Group aims to produce evidence synthesis outputs that are user-driven, high-quality, and useful for decision-making. Building on the success of the NIHR Complex Reviews Support Unit (CRSU), we have reconstructed the CRSU team and broadened our expertise to form the Evidence Synthesis Group at the CRSU. Our Group has all the requisite expertise, experience, and established collaborative partnerships to deliver evidence synthesis outputs that are user-driven, high-quality, and useful for decision-making across the four nations. Our expertise covers the areas of: co-production of review questions; information science and retrieval; critical appraisal; health economics and economic modelling; epidemiology and statistics; synthesis of qualitative evidence; understanding of evidence sources; dissemination and implementation. We have an excellent track record at producing and advising on evidence synthesis outputs that has informed decision-making across wide-ranging areas within healthcare, public health and social care. Our Group also has extensive experience as evidence users in our roles as decision-makers. It is evident from our achievements through our individual research and the work of the CRSU that we are collaborative, responsive and agile, while delivering on our objectives on time and within budget. We have clear understanding on the potential challenges involved and solutions required for reviews of complex health challenges. We are at the forefront of developing and implementing novel approaches to enhance the quality of our work. We have a wide network of stakeholders, including representatives from the spheres of healthcare, social care and policy, that we can access to support all aspects of our work. This includes our existing networks of potential lay partners. However, we are mindful of the need to proactively involve those communities who have not traditionally been part of evidence synthesis research and will use our resources and novel approaches to reach out to these groups. We aim to proactively share activities/experts with other evidence synthesis groups, so as to contribute to a sustainable community for evidence synthesis. We have clear understanding of NIHR’s aims and evolving priorities (detailed in “Best Research for Best Health: the Next Chapter”). We share NIHR’s aims in undertaking research to tackle complex health and social care challenges, including multiple long-term conditions and mental health. Our Group is committed to producing outputs: (i) that will have significant impact on health, economy, and the wider society (going beyond clinical and health outcomes); (ii) that are excellent in originality, significance and rigour; (iii) that are delivered in a timely and cost-effective manner.