Investigating the cost-effectiveness of health information technologies: a systematic review protocol

Search methods

We will search the published empirical and grey literature from 1990 until 2013 for work investigating the returns on investment in HITs. This start date has been chosen to ensure that we capture the period when policy makers particularly became interested in the potential of HIT and also because the technologies that existed before this time period are likely to have only limited relevance to contemporary health systems.

We will search the following major biomedical databases: The Cochrane Library (and its associated databases, namely: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews; Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL); Cochrane Methodology Register; Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE); Health Technology Assessment Database; and the NHS Economic Evaluation Database), MEDLINE, EMBASE, Google Scholar, ClinicalTrials.gov and Current Controlled Trials. Specific search strategies will be employed for each database; an example of a search strategy developed for MEDLINE is shown in online supplementary appendix 1.