[GA24-04] Evaluation of the relevance of Embase for searches for drug trials

Information retrieval for the preparation of systematic reviews of pharmacological interventions has changed considerably over the past 20 years. This is largely due to the legal obligation in the USA (since 2007) and EU (since 2011) to register almost all clinical studies and then to promptly publish the results.

Embase is a bibliographical database comprising more than 36 million data records and 8500 journals. Since searching and screening in Embase is very time-consuming due to the high number of hits, and at the same time experience shows that only very few additional publications are found via Embase, this general commission analyses internally available data in order to investigate the value of Embase for IQWiG benefit assessments.