PhillyEBM.com

What is PhillyEBM.com

PhillyEBM is sponsored by the Division of General Pediatrics and the Pediatric Generalist Research Group of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. This site features a number of resources for pediatricians, to aid them in the practice of EBM, or "Evidence-Based Medicine". One major goal of the site is to teach pediatric residents how to best use the medical literature available at their fingertips, through resources like PubMed and other online medical sites.

How do I use the EBM resources on this site?

Start by reviewing the curriculum.  We currently use an EBM curriculum co-developed by the medical libraries at Duke University and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.  We've divided their online curriculum into four weeks, starting with an overview of evidence based medicine, and moving on to a standardized approach to thinking about clinical questions and finding relevant literature. The curriculum culminates with you and your EBM group writing a short topical summary known as a "CAT" file. You can view CAT files from other authors by following this link.

What is a "CAT"?

"CAT" is short for "Critically Appraised Topic". The format was devised at McMaster University (Ann Roy Soc Phys Surg Canada 1995;28:396-8) as a way to teach resident physicians how to critically evaluate the medical literature. There’s a good summary of the process here. Our goal is to compile a database of pediatric-related CATS, which will be stored in our "CATS Bank".

Who made this site?

This site was originally designed by Bimal Desai, MD, and Ed Behrens, MD. Bimal is a general pediatrician at CHOP with an interest in biomedical informatics. Ed is a pediatric rheumatology attending at CHOP with extensive computer programming and web design background. The current version of this site, live as of June 2007, was designed by Bimal Desai.