About Living Systematic Review

Living Systematic Review uses continuous evidence surveillance and rapid response pathways to incorporate new relevant evidence into systematic reviews and clinical practice guideline recommendations as soon as it becomes available.

Practically, this means that living systematic reviews and living guidelines:

• Are underpinned by continual, active evidence surveillance and monitoring.
• Rapidly incorporate new important evidence that is identified.
• Can communicate in near real-time the current status of the review or guideline, and any new evidence being incorporated in the recommendations.

In addition to continuous updating, Living Systematic Review aims to improve the quality, use and value of evidence synthesis activities by:

• Engaging large and diverse groups of stakeholders in appraising evidence.
• Broadening the range of research and health-related data that can be included, such as real-world data from clinical quality registries and individual patient-level data.
• Publishing recommendations in multi-layered digital formats that can be integrated into electronic medical records and decision support tools.
• Using structured data to improve the discoverability and re-use of research and health-related data.