Ann Acad Med Singap
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Ann Acad Med Singap · Jul 2002
ReviewEvidence-based medicine: the key to guidelines, disease and care management programmes.
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is based on the concept of applying best practice to the diagnosis or treatment of a single patient or clinical question, one patient at one time. Although this is useful as a practitioner seeing patients one at a time, it is limited in its application to populations or to single patients with multiple diseases. I will review how to apply EBM to the structure and implementation of population-based care management programmes. ⋯ To optimally improve the health of a population, chronic collaborative care programmes must be built and implemented that utilise best practice as defined by evidence in the literature.