Lesson 11 – Systematic Literature Review Course: Updates and Efficiency

Introduction: The Real-World Challenge of Literature Reviews

Missed last week? Read our Past Lesson: Comprehensive Guide to IVDR Literature. Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already!

By now, you’ve learned all the essential components needed to perform high-quality systematic literature reviews that will pass even the most rigorous auditor reviews. But what happens once you enter the real world of medical device or pharmaceutical product reviews?

In this lesson, we’ll explore the tools you’ll use, common challenges, and strategies to make your literature reviews more efficient and less error-prone.

Life After School: Entering the Real World of Systematic Reviews

Soon, you’ll be putting your systematic review skills into practice. Whether you’re working on a medical device, drug, or any other product, the lessons learned in this course will be put to the test. But remember—nothing in the real world is as simple and straightforward as it seems during your training.

This lesson will focus on the key realities you might face while conducting systematic reviews for real-world evidence, as well as provide you with useful tools to enhance your efficiency.

Management and Marketing Struggles: Pushback on Unrealistic Claims

As a systematic reviewer, you’re often faced with conflicting priorities between your technical work and the expectations of marketing or upper management. You may be handed clinical benefits or product claims that don’t align with the literature you’re reviewing. This can be a difficult conversation, as no one wants to hear that the headline features of a product are unsupported by scientific evidence.

When faced with these challenges, it’s critical to push back when claims are overly ambitious or unsupported by existing research. Failing to do so can lead to wasted time reworking your review and adjusting the clinical evaluation report (CER) based on new results.

This is a common pitfall for first-time systematic reviewers, and being proactive in challenging unrealistic claims will save you from redoing your work later on.

The Time Factor: Efficiency in Literature Reviews

Systematic literature reviews are time-consuming tasks. It’s impossible to gain a complete understanding of your product without thoroughly reading through the literature. But time is often limited, and balancing this with the need for high-quality output is a challenge many reviewers face.

One of the key takeaways from this course is that literature reviews are not just about analysis—they also require time and proper organization. This is something that many medical writers underestimate when performing their first systematic review for regulatory purposes (MDR, IVDR, or otherwise).

Challenges with Organizing and Compiling Literature

When conducting a systematic review, much of your time will be spent on organizing and compiling your research. This often includes:

• Selecting search terms
• Compiling studies from multiple databases
• Removing duplicates
• Organizing inclusion/exclusion reasons
• Generating submission-ready output documents
• Managing citations after the review is completed

If you don’t plan your time efficiently, these tasks can quickly snowball into a significant drain on your resources. This is where tools like CiteMed can help streamline your review process.

Maximizing Efficiency with Tools

Excel, CiteMed, and Other Tools for Systematic Reviews

Each tool you use for your literature review has its pros and cons, but the goal is always the same: maximize efficiency while minimizing error.

• Excel: While Excel can be a powerful tool for organizing data, it can be error-prone. The margin for human error increases when you’re dealing with large datasets and manually inputting information. Mistakes in formulae or misplacement of data can lead to incorrect results or missed citations.
• CiteMed: This tool is specifically designed to help streamline the process of conducting literature reviews. From helping you choose search terms to automatically generating clean submission-ready output, CiteMed minimizes the time you spend on manual tasks and reduces the risk of errors.
• Other Tools: Platforms like EndNote and Zotero are useful for managing references and citations, but they don’t necessarily streamline the entire literature review process. These tools can complement Excel and CiteMed but are not a comprehensive solution for managing complex reviews.

Efficiency: Key Takeaways

To maximize your efficiency while conducting literature reviews, keep these tips in mind:

1. Leverage Automation: Use tools like CiteMed to automate repetitive tasks, such as generating outputs, removing duplicates, and organizing data.
2. Keep Track of Changes: Regular updates and audit trails are essential to maintain an accurate record of your review process. Ensure that all updates are logged to facilitate future audits.
3. Limit Margin of Error: Always double-check your work in Excel or other manual tools. Small errors can have a large impact on your review and outcomes.
4. Set Realistic Expectations: Make sure you communicate the time requirements for a quality review with your team. Don’t underestimate the time it will take to compile, analyze, and organize the literature.

Next Steps: Preparing for the Final Exam

Now that you’ve learned the critical tools and strategies for efficient and effective systematic literature reviews, the next step is the final exam! Your exam will be multiple choice and should be straightforward if you’ve kept up with each lesson.

Once completed, you’ll receive your grade and feedback. Passing the exam will certify you in performing systematic literature reviews the CiteMed way!

Thank You for Joining the Course!

As you approach the end of this course, we want to thank you for your time and dedication. We hope that the knowledge and practical tips shared throughout these lessons will serve you well in your future systematic review endeavors.

We’d love to hear your feedback on the course and encourage you to share it with your colleagues if you found it helpful.