Although PDQ-Evidence will no longer receive updates, the website and its contents will remain available.
11|MAY|2023
PDQ-Evidence, the database providing rapid access to evidence about health systems is no longer updated
Although PDQ-Evidence will no longer receive updates, the website and its contents will remain available.
Eleven years after its release, PDQ-Evidence, a database designed to expedite access to the most reliable evidence for making informed decisions regarding health systems and public health, will cease its updates.
As its name suggests, PDQ (pretty darn quick) was designed to provide rapid access to the evidence to support healthcare decisions about how to organise, finance and govern health systems, and strategies for implementing changes. The database hosts more than 100,000 articles, including 14,336 systematic reviews, which are accessible through a simple and an advanced search interface.
The initial funding for PDQ-Evidence came from the SURE (Supporting the Use of Research Evidence for Policy in African Health Systems) project, in turn financed by an European Union program. Maintainance and further development were funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and the Norwegian satellite of the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care (EPOC) Group.
Since July 2022, no new records have been added to PDQ-Evidence as a result of the cessation of funding. However, an archive version of PDQ-Evidence will continue to be accessible until at least December 2024. The Epistemonikos Foundation and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health are actively dedicated to exploring funding opportunities to recommence the updates of PDQ-Evidence.