For some, the hesitation to trust artificial intelligence (AI) in systematic reviews comes from not fully understanding the technology that powers it. For example, when we say DistillerSR uses “natural language processing,” what does that really mean in practical...

Vivian MacAdden
What Will Happen to Legacy Products Under EU MDR?
Products in the medical industry that were made before applicable standards or regulations came into effect are known as legacy products or grandfathered products. Since these products pre-date specific directives, they are often exempt from meeting the new...
Past, Present, and Future: Automation in Systematic Review Software
Imagine 25 years ago. You are working on a systematic review. You are making hard copies of reports and studies, manually highlighting the relevant information, filing included studies in a cabinet and moving the excluded studies elsewhere. Your eyes are strained,...
5 Holiday Gift Ideas for Researchers
What sneaks up faster than the May 2020 EU MDR deadline? The holidays, of course! If you’re stumped on what to get the researcher or academic in your life, or if you are a researcher whose family and friends keep asking for your wish list, you’re in luck! We polled...
Why the Risk Management Process Needs Systematic Reviews
Many industries that undertake policy and guideline creation perform some type of risk assessment. It could be identifying and quantifying specific risks relating to a company and its stakeholders, or a broader mandate to assess risk and harm in the general...
Systematic Literature Review Essentials For Regulatory Pros
*This post was updated in April 2020 to reflect the postponement of the EU MDR deadline. In today’s fast changing regulatory landscape, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Regulatory bodies are placing manufacturer data and submissions under the proverbial microscope to...
Not Just Black and White: Using Grey Literature in Your Research
A comprehensive systematic review takes literature and data from a broad spectrum of sources and uses it to answer a clearly-defined, specific question. But one source is making waves in research these days: grey literature. What is it? How do you use it? What are the...
How to Save Time and Money with Your Full-Text Reference Procurement
If you ask any research team what their biggest challenge is, chances are it will be the amount of time required to complete their work. When conducting a systematic review, full-text reference procurement can be particularly time-consuming. It can also be an...
How Systematic Review Tools Can Help Researchers in 2019
The results are in! Thank you to everyone who took the time to answer questions in our 2019 Survey on Literature Reviews. We use this info to identify trends and understand precisely how the literature review community is evolving over the years. Gathering this data...
How to Solve Your Top Systematic Review Challenges
Systematic reviews are complex, and research teams often struggle with managing all the moving parts efficiently. If you work in the evidence-based research field, chances are you’ll face these common challenges. Logistics and Coordination Systematic reviews require a...