A Web-based archive of systematic review data

In order to address these inefficiencies, and to improve the speed and quality of healthcare policy- and decision-making, we have initiated the development of the Systematic Review Data Repository, an open collaborative Web-based repository of systematic review data. As envisioned, this resource would serve as both a central archive and data extraction tool, shared among and freely accessible to organizations producing systematic reviews worldwide. A suite of easy-to-use software tools with a Web frontend would enable researchers to seamlessly search for and incorporate previously deposited data into their own reviews, as well as contribute their own.In developing this resource, we identified a number of technical and non-technical challenges, as well as devised a number of potential solutions, including proposals for systems and software tools to assure data quality, stratify and control user access effectively and flexibly accommodate all manner of study data, as well as means by which to govern and foster adoption of this new resource.Herein we provide an account of the rationale and development of the Systematic Review Data Repository thus far, as well as outline its future trajectory.Tasked with effectively integrating an ever-expanding sea of scientific data, findings from systematic reviews, which combine and synthesize data from many individual studies, have become invaluable to healthcare decision-makers. In the US, the recent passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has mandated a renewed emphasis on evidence-based practice through comparative effectiveness research. Systematic reviews are therefore poised to play an even more prominent role in US health policy. However, conducting these reviews remains time-consuming and labor-intensive [1].A fundamental step in conducting a systematic review is identifying relevant studies and extracting the essential information from each study, information such as the study design, study population, de