Searching for diabetes decision aids and related background information

Patient decision aids (DAs) are interventions designed to help patients making informed decisions. DAs are complex interventions comprising a number of active components each essential to the proper functioning of the aid. Critical appraisal of DAs therefore requires access to information describing the incremental assessment of each stage in their development, including information about the theoretical funding, development processes, efficacy trials and long-term implementation. We explored the feasibility of identifying such information with conventional database search strategies. Our study was conducted only in the field of diabetes care.

The 'Inventory of Existing Patient Decision Aids', medline (PubMed) and the World Wide Web were used to identify DAs relevant for diabetes care. For tracking information concerning each developmental stage, the reference lists of the DAs, home pages of the authors, medline, embase, PsycINFO, cinahl, and the Cochrane database were searched systematically.

A total of 13 DAs relevant for diabetes care were identified. The search for publications concerning their development yielded more than 3000 results, only 10 of which referred to at least one of the 13 DAs. No additional background information was found on the home pages of the authors.

Conventional database search strategies do not allow the extraction of information about the stages in development of a DA. To facilitate critical appraisal of DAs, we propose the creation of an electronic database which provides information about available DAs, together with the relevant background literature, or to incorporate such a system into existing databases.