Centre for Evidence Synthesis and GRADE
Why GRADE?
GRADE is short for “Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation”. Decisions about evidence and recommendations in healthcare are complex. In making a recommendation to use a particular treatment, there are many trade-offs around the effectiveness of the treatment, the quality of patient outcomes, the cost of delivery and so on.
Systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare provide an essential input to making informed decisions. Similarly, practice guidelines help users to evaluate recommendations. Overall, these evidence-based approaches to healthcare seek to prevent errors in health delivery, better outcomes for patients, and better use of resources.
Nottingham Ningbo GRADE Centre
Nottingham is a world leader in the use of routinely collected clinical data to distil the best available clinical evidence into practical and usable clinical guidelines. Building on that research excellence, in early 2018, the Ningbo GRADE Centre was established to develop clinical guidelines for China. There are 10 GRADE centres globally and two in China.
Our goal is to become China’s leading centre for evidence-based healthcare, utilising evidence synthesis methods and GRADE evidence to decision (EtD) framework to accelerate and advance the development of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines in China.
Meet our team
Jun Xia studied Psychology and business management at The University of Leeds, before pursuing an MSc in healthcare research methods in the same University. She joined The Cochrane Schizophrenia Group in 2005 as a systematic reviewer, and embarked on a journey to pursue evidence informed healthcare. Her main expertise is around secondary evidence synthesis, particularly systematic reviews and meta-analysis. She worked extensively with The Cochrane Collaboration and authored over 40 Cochrane systematic reviews in a diverse range of healthcare topics in both physical and mental health. She also has a strong research interest in the development of evidence-based clinical practice guideline, in particular, the use of GRADE EtD framework in guideline development.
Co-Director of Nottingham Ningbo GRADE Centre jun.xia@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor Richard Hubbard studied for his undergraduate degree in Medicine and Immunology at London University, before undertaking clinical postgraduate training at Nottingham. He trained in Epidemiology at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Professor Hubbard's current main area of research interest is lung disease, including lung fibrosis and lung cancer. He is also involved in improving general practice data for research, coding free text data.
Clinical Director of Nottingham China Health Institute
richard.hubbard@nottingham.ac.uk
Yuqing (Madison) Zhang is an assistant professor in Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact in McMaster University and in University of Nottingham Ningbo China, GRADE center. Dr. Zhang has over 10 years of experience in medical research/Evidence-based medicine specifically on clinical epidemiology, clinical trial design, integrative medicine, application of artificial intelligence in medicine, health outcomes research, systematic reviews and clinical practice guidelines. Dr. Zhang has demonstrated advance skills in GRADE methodology and CPGs development by acting as the lead methodologist with Canadian Government and multiple prestigious medication associations to produce state of art CPGs or high quality systematic reviews to informing the CPGs.
Dr. Zhang has authored and co-authored 43 publication including 22 systematic reviews and 6 book chapters regarding evidence-based clinical practice including JAMA’s Users’ Guide to the Medical Literature.
Mohammed Ansari trained in Internal Medicine before pursuing a career in Evidence-based Medicine as a meta-researcher and guideline development methodologist. He also holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Trials Research Methodology and an MPhil. degree in Clinical Trials.
Mohammed’s areas of methodological research interest include study risk of bias assessment and going from evidence to decisions. To this end, he has participated in various international methods working groups such as the GRADE, Cochrane and those associated with the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Mohammed is also affiliated with the School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine, the University of Ottawa. Mohammed has previously served as Associate Director of the University of Ottawa Evidence-based Practice Centre as well as Associate Editor for AHRQ’s Evidence-based Practice Center program.
External Partners
GRADE is an international working group that began in 2000 as an informal collaboration to address the shortcomings of grading systems in healthcare, especially around the quality (or certainty) of evidence and the strength of recommendations.
Cochrane, a global non-profit organization with contributors for more than 130 countries, was established to promote evidence-based health decision-making by producing credible and accessible health information in 1993.