The ESG Best Practice Working Group in Automation and Technological Advancement is chaired jointly by James Thomas (LACES) and Alex Sutton (@CRSU).

The group’s activities fall into three main areas
 

• Meeting on on a monthly basis to share tools, experiences and ideas and to further understanding across ESGs
• Sharing tools and resources on this web page
• Developing and sharing templates for studies within a review (SWARs) for ESGs (and others) to use

Agenda for 2024-5 meetings (1pm on third Thursday of the month)

(See links where available for slides)

2025 meetings

• January 16: Tool demo and discussion: Nested Knowledge*
• February 20: How do we validate tools for use? (including key uncertainties for SWARs)
• March 20: Tool demo and discussion: TERA
• April 17: Guidance for the responsible use of AI in evidence synthesis (RAISE)
• May 15: Tool demo and discussion*
• June 19: Implementation and adoption of technologies
• July 17: Tool demo and discussion*

* individual tool developers invited to present and discuss their tools

2024 meetings

• April: Alex Sutton on using R for meta-analysis and systematic review processes
• May 16: James Thomas on collaborative work to develop guidelines for the responsible use of AI in systematic reviews
• June 20: Andrew Booth on automation methods to assist in study selection
• July 18: 'Lightning presentations' from group members with the aim of taking stock: where are we in terms of automation? What do we need? What do we need to know?
• August 15: Open discussion
• September 19: Large language models for data extraction (can we? should we?)
• October 17: Gerald Gartlehner: Opportunities and challenges for data extraction with a large language model
• November 21: Joint meeting with the ESG working group on Studies Within A Review (SWAR)
• December 19:Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative slides can be downloaded here

Meetings are open to anyone in an NIHR ESG. Please contact James Thomas if you would like to be added to the calendar invite list. 

Resources
 

• Database of digital evidence synthesis tools
• A list of useful tools to try out
• Screening tools to try / evaluate / use (from Andrew Booth's talk in June 2024)