PICO is the medical/clinical literature research process for identifying, retrieving and assessing evidence based data or information.
- PICO is a process.
- PICO is not a software like Endnote and Microsoft Word.
- PICO is not a database like Pubmed or Cochrane or Uptodate, etc.
- PICO helps you frame your research question before and while searching for medical and clinical information.
- Framing your research process also requires selecting appropriate keywords to use in the Pubmed database and Cochrane database.
- Use Pubmed's keyword index called MeSH which helps filter out unrelated information.
- You will now notice PICO search results in Cochrane database.
- The best type of evidence based medical/clincal journal articles are those labled systematic reviews and meta analysis journal articles .
- Take a look at te rating of the evidence based medical journal articles by type at Figure 1 Strength of evidence Pyramid.
