PICO process

The PICO process (or framework) is a mnemonic used in evidence based practice (and specifically Evidence Based Medicine) to frame and answer a clinical or health care related question.[1] The PICO framework is also used to develop literature search strategies, for instance in systematic reviews.[2] The PICO acronym stands for[3][4]

P – Patient, Problem or Population
I – Intervention
C – Comparison, control or comparator[5]
O – Outcome(s) (e.g. pain, fatigue, nausea, infections, death)

Alternatives such as SPICE and PECO (among many others) can also be used. Some authors suggest adding T and S, as follows:

T - Timing, duration or date of publication (e.g. measured at 1-month of follow-up, published between 1990 and 2000)
S - Study type (e.g. randomized controlled trial, cohort study, etc.)

Examples

Clinical question: "In children with headache, is paracetamol more effective than placebo against pain?"

Population = Children with headaches; keywords = children + headache
Intervention = Paracetamol; keyword = paracetamol
Compared with = Placebo; keyword = placebo
Outcome of interest = Pain; keyword = pain

Pubmed (health research database) search strategy: children headache paracetamol placebo pain

gollark: Irrelevant. Haskell is lazy.

gollark: You mean JavaScript?

gollark: C as C preprocessor when?! I mean, this would be terrible as C makes string ops apioforms and would make ASTs bad but still.

gollark: Learning them would take time and the benefit isn't substantial.

gollark: I never learned any precedence rules so all is bracketed.

References

Huang X, Lin J, Demner-Fushman D (2006). "Evaluation of PICO as a knowledge representation for clinical questions" (PDF). AMIA Annu Symp Proc: 359–63. PMC 1839740. PMID 17238363.
Schardt C, Adams MB, Owens T, Keitz S, Fontelo P (2007). "Utilization of the PICO framework to improve searching PubMed for clinical questions". BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 7: 16. doi:10.1186/1472-6947-7-16. PMC 1904193. PMID 17573961.
"Asking a Good Question (PICO)". 17 November 2004. Retrieved 2010-05-18.
Richardson, WS (1995). "The well-built clinical question: a key to evidence based-decisions". APC Journal Club. 123, 3: A12–A13.
"Chapter 2. Systematic Review Methods -- AHRQ Technical Reviews and Summaries -- NCBI Bookshelf". Retrieved 2010-05-18.

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[pmid17238363-1] Huang X, Lin J, Demner-Fushman D (2006). "Evaluation of PICO as a knowledge representation for clinical questions" (PDF). AMIA Annu Symp Proc: 359–63. PMC 1839740. PMID 17238363.

[pmid17573961-2] Schardt C, Adams MB, Owens T, Keitz S, Fontelo P (2007). "Utilization of the PICO framework to improve searching PubMed for clinical questions". BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 7: 16. doi:10.1186/1472-6947-7-16. PMC 1904193. PMID 17573961.

[urlPICO-3] "Asking a Good Question (PICO)". 17 November 2004. Retrieved 2010-05-18.

[4] Richardson, WS (1995). "The well-built clinical question: a key to evidence based-decisions". APC Journal Club. 123, 3: A12–A13.

[urlChapter_2._Systematic_Review_Methods_--_AHRQ_Technical_Reviews_and_Summaries_--_NCBI_Bookshelf-5] "Chapter 2. Systematic Review Methods -- AHRQ Technical Reviews and Summaries -- NCBI Bookshelf". Retrieved 2010-05-18.