Healthcare Informatics and Information Synthesis

<p><em>Comprehensive thoughtful and well-organized . . . an excellent guide to searching evaluating organizing and reporting the results of information syntheses.<br /></em>--CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH<br /><br />As healthcare policy and practice turn toward the use of evidence-based medicine there is a heightened need for resources that cover the process of research synthesis for the purpose of healthcare outcome improvement. <b>Healthcare Informatics and Information Synthesis</b> integrates the conceptual and procedural dimensions of research synthesis in each of the five stages of the process to produce step-by-step instructions for clinically applicable research syntheses. Explicit instructions are given for tasks ranging from computing a <i>kappa</i> to aggregating effect sizes. The authors provide seven detailed meta-analytic examples that cover a variety of data types ranging from mean differences to odds ratios allowing the reader to replicate the results exactly.</p>