NHMRC Australia - Breakthrough: 2019-20 Natural Therapy Review update

Your Health Choice tells that the australian report on complementary therapies will be reviewed:

– Studies deemed not to have been properly assessed in the 2014-15 review will now be eligible for re-assessment in the 2019-20 review . This is a very important concession, given the substandard quality of the previous review, which did not properly assess many studies identified and excluded a substantial body of evidence from its scope. The Advisory Panel will determine what evidence needs to be submitted to the NHMRC for reconsideration in the 2019-20 Review.

– The range of evidence eligible for assessment has been broadened to accommodate a ‘tiered methodology’ . What this means is that for a given therapy, in the absence of ‘Level I’ evidence (the highest level of evidence according to the NHMRC evidence hierarchy), the evidence search will be expanded to Level II and Level III evidence, to ensure all relevant evidence is captured. This is how health evidence is normally assessed.

– The NHMRC has agreed to include an expert in homeopathy research to advise the NHMRC NTWC on the draft research protocol for homeopathy . The exclusion of any homeopathy topic or research expert(s) in the 2012-2015 NHMRC Homeopathy Review was an unprecedented procedural irregularity that directly resulted in critical methodological errors, and producing meaningless findings.

– The final research protocols will be pre-published on the open-access PROSPERO online database to ensure transparency . This is in contrast to the 2014-15 review, where transparency was lacking in the development of the research protocols for any natural therapy, which were developed without consultation with topic/ research experts. Evidence later emerged that the NHMRC working committee retrospectively manipulated the research protocol for the 2015 homeopathy review, which directly influenced its findings. Pre-publishing the research protocols should prevent such questionable conduct from occurring in the 2019-20 Review.

– Studies published in languages other than English will now be eligible for inclusion in the review.
source: https://www.yourhealthyourchoice.com.au/news-features/breakthrough-2019-20-natural-therapy-review-update/

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