ideasIdea
Funded living systematic reviews for every major cancer indication
Instead of a review that is out of date on publication, fund teams to keep one continuously updated review per cancer setting, adding each new trial as it appears.
Systematic reviews take a year and are outdated within another. Living systematic reviews with continuous search, AI-assisted screening and network meta-analysis have been sustained in COVID-19 and a few other areas. The proposal funds a living review per major indication (perhaps 60), each maintained by a small team using shared tooling, published as structured data feeding living guidelines.
Hypothesis
Living reviews will incorporate new trial results within 30 days of publication and will be cited as the primary evidence source by guideline bodies for the covered indications within three years.
Rationale
The COVID-NMA living network meta-analysis updated weekly for years; the tooling (automated search, machine learning screening, standard extraction) has matured enough to run at lower cost per review.
What would test it
Fund ten living reviews for two years; measure update latency, cost per update, and guideline citation compared with conventional reviews in matched indications.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
philanthropy
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
2
Bottlenecks it attacks
- Knowledge reaches practice too slowly · Knowledge diffusion is slow: it takes years for a proven result to change what most patients receive, and no one can keep up with the literature.