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Systematic Review: Concept and Tool Development with Application in the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Assessment Process

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Systematic Review: Concept and tool development with application to the National Toxicology Program (NTP) and the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Assessment Processes. There is growing interest within the environmental health community to incorporate systematic review methodology to increase transparency and objectivity of literature reviews of complex environmental questions. Systematic review uses a pre-established scientific framework to identify, select, assess, and summarize data from available studies to address specific scientific questions. The goal is to ensure the review is complete, unbiased, reproducible and transparent. The results of a systematic review can be used to inform decisions, reach conclusions, or identify research needs. Environmental health questions require the evaluation of a broad range of relevant data (e.g., human, animal, and “other relevant data” including mechanistic or in vitro studies), therefore systematic review methods must consider the diversity of data types and include procedures to integrate data across these evidence streams to reach conclusions regarding potential health effects from environmental exposures. This session will provide a general overview of systematic review methods for addressing environmental questions and several software tools that facilitate the application of the workflow. Examples will be presented from both the National Toxicology Program’s Office of Health Assessment and Translation (OHAT) and the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) at EPA.

Impact/Purpose

The current state of the science for risk assessment is to conduct systematic reviews which increase the transparency and rigor of the assessments. In this presentation to the Risk Assessment Specialty Section of the Society of Toxicology, we describe the implementation of three innovative software programs (SWIFT-Review, DistillerSR and HAWC) that support the systematic review process in the IRIS program. This effort will facilitate multi-agency dialogue.

Citation

Taylor, MicheleM AND V. Walker. Systematic Review: Concept and Tool Development with Application in the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) Assessment Process. Risk Assessment Specialty Section of the Society of Toxicology Webinar Series, Research Triangle Park, NC, November 08, 2017.

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Last updated on December 01, 2017
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