Tools for EAA Activities

Tools developed by EuroScan members to aid early awareness and alert activities can be used and/or adapted by other members and external agencies.

The Galician Health Technology Assessment Agency (avalia-t) a member of the Spanish GENTECS network (http://gentecs.isciii.es/Comun/Inicio.aspx) has developed a tool for prioritising technologies:

http://pritectools.es/index.php?idioma=en

Osteba has developed a tool for Critical Appraisal:

http://www.lecturacritica.com/en/

The Web platform ( www.lecturacritica.com ) has been developed containing 7 different instruments (diagnostic tests, systematic reviews, clinical trials, cohort studies, case-control studies, economic assessments and case series) for critical appraisal depending on different study designs. Each instrument consists of a checklist divided into 10 domains, a glossary about epidemiological concepts and a menu to facilitate completion.

The Web platform 2.0 has some interesting features to facilitate the critical appraisal including: a guided process to complete the appraisals, criteria to evaluate some epidemiological designs that have a few instruments available and automatic generation of evidence tables.