Finding Nessie

This blog was originally featured on the NESSIE blogspot, where they offer frequent blogs on their work. You can find more, here.

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Individuals and groups from across Usher have combined forces with other institutions to form NESSIE (NIHR Evidence Synthesis Scotland InitiativE), one of nine evidence synthesis groups funded by the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Programme. They have written a few blogs as an introduction to the team and the types of evidence synthesis they will be undertaking.  

We are delighted to announce the launch of the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Scotland InitiativE or NESSIE.

NIHR is the National Institute for Health and Care Research who pay for and complete research within the UK. They have paid for nine specialist research groups throughout the UK including NESSIE. Researchers from four universities have come together to form NESSIE including the University of Edinburgh, Glasgow Caledonian University, University of Stirling and Newcastle University. NESSIE also includes people who have experience of living with health conditions and using health services.  

The purpose of NESSIE is to carry out a specialist type of research called evidence synthesis on topics in health or social care. 

What is evidence synthesis? 

Evidence synthesis brings together information from different research studies to provide a summary of what we know and don’t know. This is important as it helps people who work in health or social care services decide what treatment or help to offer people. It also shows us what research still needs to be carried out.  

There are different ways to carry out evidence synthesis depending on what type of information people want to know. This might include how much treatment or help costs, how well it works or what it feels like. Topics can be very detailed looking at just one treatment or comparing lots of different treatments together. It is also important to think about how the evidence synthesis is carried out to make sure the information and results can be trusted. The people who work as part of NESSIE have lots of experience of carrying out different types of evidence synthesis. By working together, we will be able to carry out 3-5 evidence synthesis projects per year over the next five years.  

We will be using this blog site to let you know what projects we are working on, share information about how we are carrying these out and what we learn. If you would like to know more about our work please visit the NESSIE website.