[The gap between evidence-based medicine (EBM) and practice: how is the "evidence" brought together?]

The implementation of the growing body of evidence in health care is a major matter of concern. Health care professionals and policy makers often only had a limited if any training in searching for relevant and objective information efficiently. Furthermore, information sources of high quality are not readily available in the health care system or are often not accessible in daily practice. Health care workers depend on other sources for information about newest developments: marketing from the industry, media, opinion leaders, CPD, etc. In this lecture, three possible ways to summarize the available evidence and to forward pre-appraised sources of information to health care professionals are discussed: systematic reviews, practice guidelines and health care technology assessment reports. Finally, the recently founded Belgian health care knowledge centre is presented. This government agency has the mission to diminish the gap between the scientific community and health care policy makers.