Figure 1

The process of surveillance assessment for a systematic review (SR). Figure 1 portrays the overall process of surveillance assessment for an SR that mainly includes: 1) literature search, 2) contacting experts, and 3) obtaining safety alerts from various sources sent by ECRI (one of the AHRQ evidence-based centers). The number of hits identified by literature search would be transferred to Reference Manager database and then will be screened by: 1) title and abstract, and 2) full text. The data was extracted from the number of studies that were deemed eligible for inclusion. Next, the extracted data was assessed for identifying qualitative and quantitative signals. Then, the findings from literature, expert opinion, and safety alerts were collated and assessed for updating priority status (high, medium or low). If an SR was deemed as ‘high’ priority for assessment, it was referred to AHRQ for updating. If an SR was deemed as ‘medium’ or ‘high’ priority for updating, it was re-assessed six months after the completion of the first assessment.