Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges for healthcare, especially the increase in health-acquired infections (HAIs), which has put significant pressure on the development of social and economic policy in China. At present, the number of HAIs-related research and policy reports is gradually increasing and gaining attention from different stakeholders. At the same time, the current scope of HAIs research, translation, and implementation in China is unclear and cannot further effectively support evidence-informed decision-making.
Objectives: To evaluate the current evidence ecosystem of HAIs prevention and control in China and identify key issues and challenges to improve it in the future.
Methods: We established a national and international multidisciplinary working group. There were two stages for this evaluation. First, we systematically searched seven main databases (PubMed, Web of Science [WoS], Embase, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], Virtual Interactive Platform [VIP], and Chinese Biomedical Database [CBM]) for all HAIs-relevant documents such as clinical trials, models, reviews, guidelines, policies, and implementation systems from their individual inception to Feb 20, 2023. Reviewers working in pairs and independently selected documents according to the inclusion criteria and extract information. For included documents, according to their type, their evidence quality was assessed. Second, referring to the MAGIC (Making Grade the Irresistible Choice) evidence ecosystem, reviewers evaluated the completeness of the HAIs prevention and control ecosystem in China through the processes of evidence production, synthesis, dissemination, implementation, and evaluation.
Results: Our search identified 28,126 documents. The detailed results will be shown at the conference.
Conclusions: Relevant research and documents on HAIs are growing rapidly. However, repeated research in the same field leads to serious research waste and an incomplete evidence ecosystem. It is suggested that policymakers, stakeholders, and researchers should refer to the current evidence ecosystem before making decisions to fill the research gap.
Patient, public and/or healthcare consumer involvement: None.