Evidence-based Medicine

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) (sometimes called evidence-based health care or EBHC to broaden its application to allied health care professionals) has been defined as "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients." Trisha Greenhalgh and Anna Donald define it more specifically as "the use of mathematical estimates of the risk of benefit and harm, derived from high-quality research on population samples, to inform clinical decision-making in the diagnosis, investigation or management of individual patients."

EBM seeks to assess the strength of the evidence of risks and benefits of treatments (including lack of treatment) and diagnostic tests. This helps clinicians predict whether a treatment will do more good than harm.

Evidence quality can be assessed based on the source type (from meta-analyses and systematic reviews of triple-blind randomized clinical trials with concealment of allocation and no attrition at the top end, down to conventional wisdom at the bottom), as well as other factors including statistical validity, clinical relevance, currency, and peer-review acceptance. EBM recognizes that many aspects of health care depend on individual factors such as quality- and value-of-life judgments, which are only partially subject to quantitative scientific methods. Application of EBM data therefore depends on patient circumstances and preferences, and medical treatment remains subject to input from personal, political, philosophical, ethical, economic, and esthetic values.

Because EBM is used in allied fields, including dentistry, nursing and psychology, evidence-based practice (EBP) is a more encompassing term.