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28 May 2016
Doha - A unique application developed in Qatar is widely helping medical professionals and researchers to decide health guidelines and support evidence-based medicine, according to a senior scientist.
The application 'Rayyan' is a data analytics system helps to automate the process of systematic review of available research. It is being used in Qatar and 50 other countries by at least 1,000 researchers, mostly in Europe.
Rayyan is a free web and mobile application developed by Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), a research institute of Hamad Bin Khalifa University.
Traditionally, scientists conduct systematic reviews of the available research - costly and time-consuming exercises that typically involve one or two people sifting through thousands of medical journal articles for at least a year.
Dr Mourad Ouzzani, Principal Scientist, Data Analytics, QCRI told The Peninsula that those who had used Rayyan were reporting positive results from the technology, which helps to identify relevant published and unpublished evidence, select studies for inclusion, collaborate on reviews, assess the quality of each study and synthesize the findings in an unbiased way.
"Rayyan is changing the way systematic reviews are produced and is dramatically reducing the time it takes for producing systematic reviews for a large number of users around the world. By automating the production of systematic reviews, Rayyan is expediting the availability of current best evidence for policy and clinical decision-making," he said.
Dr Ouzzani and Hossam Hammady, senior software engineer, QCRI devised Rayyan and released its first version in September 2014.
According to a recent survey on Rayyan revealed that 36 percent of the respondents achieved more than 50 percent time saving and 33 percent of them between 25 and 50 percent compared to other tools they used before.
Plans are underway to increase the number of users of Rayyan within Qatar as well as to develop the system further.
"We have few users from Qatar, exactly 12, the two more prominent are from the Primary Health Care Corporation. We hope to grow further by reaching out to Hamad Medical Corporation (We just got our first user following our presentation at the Qatar International Medical Congress held recently), Sidra, QBRI, Qatar University, Qatar National Library and the private healthcare practices interested in research," said Dr Ouzzani.
"We want to add more features to Rayyan to cover other steps in the production of systematic reviews. We are also part of a group of people around the world interested in automating systematic review, namely the International Collaboration for the Automation of Systematic Reviews; We are looking at ways in making Rayyan a reference system within this group," he added.
As the amount of medical research explodes to about 1.8 million articles in 20,000 journals per year, with much research outdated as quickly as new evidence emerges, expect data analytics to be used more frequently to establish the effectiveness of an intervention or a drug.
Doha - A unique application developed in Qatar is widely helping medical professionals and researchers to decide health guidelines and support evidence-based medicine, according to a senior scientist.
The application 'Rayyan' is a data analytics system helps to automate the process of systematic review of available research. It is being used in Qatar and 50 other countries by at least 1,000 researchers, mostly in Europe.
Rayyan is a free web and mobile application developed by Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), a research institute of Hamad Bin Khalifa University.
Traditionally, scientists conduct systematic reviews of the available research - costly and time-consuming exercises that typically involve one or two people sifting through thousands of medical journal articles for at least a year.
Dr Mourad Ouzzani, Principal Scientist, Data Analytics, QCRI told The Peninsula that those who had used Rayyan were reporting positive results from the technology, which helps to identify relevant published and unpublished evidence, select studies for inclusion, collaborate on reviews, assess the quality of each study and synthesize the findings in an unbiased way.
"Rayyan is changing the way systematic reviews are produced and is dramatically reducing the time it takes for producing systematic reviews for a large number of users around the world. By automating the production of systematic reviews, Rayyan is expediting the availability of current best evidence for policy and clinical decision-making," he said.
Dr Ouzzani and Hossam Hammady, senior software engineer, QCRI devised Rayyan and released its first version in September 2014.
According to a recent survey on Rayyan revealed that 36 percent of the respondents achieved more than 50 percent time saving and 33 percent of them between 25 and 50 percent compared to other tools they used before.
Plans are underway to increase the number of users of Rayyan within Qatar as well as to develop the system further.
"We have few users from Qatar, exactly 12, the two more prominent are from the Primary Health Care Corporation. We hope to grow further by reaching out to Hamad Medical Corporation (We just got our first user following our presentation at the Qatar International Medical Congress held recently), Sidra, QBRI, Qatar University, Qatar National Library and the private healthcare practices interested in research," said Dr Ouzzani.
"We want to add more features to Rayyan to cover other steps in the production of systematic reviews. We are also part of a group of people around the world interested in automating systematic review, namely the International Collaboration for the Automation of Systematic Reviews; We are looking at ways in making Rayyan a reference system within this group," he added.
As the amount of medical research explodes to about 1.8 million articles in 20,000 journals per year, with much research outdated as quickly as new evidence emerges, expect data analytics to be used more frequently to establish the effectiveness of an intervention or a drug.
© The Peninsula 2016
