Stakeholder needs for Digital Evidence Synthesis Tools for Climate and Health: findings from a global survey and series of workshops

Background: The climate crisis’s profound impact on human health necessitates immediate, evidence-based action. Fast-growing research evidence on climate and health provides new opportunities but makes staying abreast with and rigorously synthesising evidence increasingly challenging and time consuming. While automation tools for evidence surveillance are being developed, they lack rigorous evaluation and their suitability for climate and health research, policy and practice has been largely overlooked.
Methods: To understand the current application of Digital Evidence Synthesis Tools (DESTs), their future potential as well as barriers and opportunities for their uptake, we conducted a global survey assessing user needs for DESTs in climate and health. Surveying approximately 2000 individuals worldwide, 151 respondents provided valuable insights. Furthermore, we conducted three workshops (with researchers, tool developers, science assessment experts) to discuss findings in more depth.

Results: Covidence, EPPI Reviewer, Rayyan, RevMan, and DistillerSR emerged as popular DESTs. Researchers exhibited varying familiarity with different evidence synthesis practices, with most using DESTs in title and abstract screening stages. They were generally perceived to increase time efficiency in evidence synthesis; however, barriers to use included a lack of machine learning expertise, cost considerations, and uncertainty in tool selection. Specific needs for climate and health research were also highlighted, emphasising variations in meta-labels, definitions, inclusion criteria, and database structures. Respondents stressed the importance of rapidly updatable evidence bases to support living systematic reviews. Developers predicted future time savings in various evidence synthesis stages, notably data extraction and visualisation. However, all agreed that DESTs cannot replace human labour in quality appraisal.

Conclusion: Our findings shed light on the current landscape of DEST use in climate and health research, and emphasise the need for increased investment, capacity building, and robust evaluations to propel the widespread adoption of DESTs and facilitate comprehensive and timely evidence synthesis.”