Acquire

Why do we need to acquire ideas?

We believe that there are numerous tried-and-tested ideas, tests, therapies, organisational frameworks and solutions that have often been developed in the developing world and employed effectively to save maternal mortality and morbidity. Unfortunately, such ideas are not always captured and promoted on a wide-scale (see case study on "Taxi co-operative on-call syndicate").

Use of such ideas have the potential to improve the outcome on a wide-scale.

Where will Ammalife capture ideas?

We will capture promising ideas from any source, opportunistically and through targeted studies. The ideas could, for example, be captured from:

• practitioners working in the field
• targeted study of successful programs and projects
• published research and reports
• conferences
• other charities and organisations
• business practices

This website will allow anyone to upload and capture the ideas.

What will Ammalife do with captured ideas?

For most ideas, there will be “vertical” and “horizontal” developments.

Vertical developments refer to participants commenting on a existing idea using the “comment” function on the ideas submission web-page. This development is called vertical as any comment is appended directly below the idea on the Ammalife ideas submission page. Such vertical development is unmoderated and is not required to be structured. The emphasis is to encourage discussion on the idea.

Horizontal development refers to an Ammalife process in which a team, including information scientists, appraisers and healthcare practitioners, will produce a structured report after scrutinising the evidence underpinning an idea. The end result of this exercise will be the Evidence Appraisal Report (EAR). Having considered the evidence carefully, an EAR will recommend one of the following for each idea for which an EAR is produced:

1. Suitable for implementation packages (IPs)
2. Use in special circumstances (please define these): ………………………………………………………
3. Reject – but file under research file
4. Reject

The basis of any EAR would be a comprehensive (but not necessarily an exhaustive) literature search, and assessment and interpretation of the evidence identified.

Evidence acquisition

The ideas and suggestions uploaded to Ammalife will need to be explored in the light of any research or other evidence which exists. Ammalife will formulate clear answerable questions from our pool of ideas, then search records of published and ongoing research for relevant studies.

How will the literature searches be conducted?

We will endeavour to acquire the most robust evidence possible. To that end we will search in a hierarchic fashion as shown below.

Hierarchic approach to literature searching to support evidence-based practice (Khan & Coomarasamy, 2004)

Reproductive Health Library

This will be one of our most significant resources for robust evidence. It is largely comprised of Cochrane Systematic Reviews, with commentaries on developing world implementation. The commentaries may themselves provoke ideas to be explored further.

[RHL library]

Once appropriate evidence has been obtained, it will need to be assessed for quality – evidence appraisal is addressed on the Appraisal information page

Next: Appraise