An ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will produce a report to update the standards for systematic reviews as defined in the 2011 report Finding What Works in Health Care: Standards for Systematic Reviews. The updated systematic review standards will emphasize a robust and transparent process while also considering the evidence needs and goals of current end users of systematic reviews, and, like the previous standards, will address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to reporting findings that include synthesized evidence and remaining knowledge gaps. The standards will be based on published methodological studies and established guidance and, when this is not available, expert guidance will be referenced.
In updating the standards for systematic review, the Committee will consider and incorporate the valuable advances in evidence synthesis which have accumulated over the last decade to include an increased emphasis on patient, community, and stakeholder engagement; appropriate use of advances in technology such as AI; and, incorporating new empirical evidence and extending, when possible, to other types of evidence reviews aimed at synthesizing study results. The Committee will also consider how to balance timeliness and rigor of systematic reviews, and clearly articulate caveats and areas for flexibility when applying the updated standards, particularly for statements based on consensus.
Specifically, the Committee will:

• Evaluate current systematic review standards and identify areas to update, including but not limited to advances in systematic review methodology; addressing patient, community, and stakeholder engagement; and, appropriate use and human oversight of AI.
• Evaluate current systematic review standards and their impact on resources, timeliness and rigor, particularly for standards based on consensus.
• Generate an updated list of standards with a detailed description of the supporting evidence, guidance on their application, and a framework describing how future advances in evidence synthesis can be periodically addressed or incorporated as they accumulate.
• Consider if standards are appropriate for use in other syntheses of study results such as scoping reviews and rapid or living reviews.
• Summarize remaining evidence gaps and expected developments in technologies and methods for systematic review approaches.

The Committee will identify and engage individuals who may provide input and inform Committee deliberations, including those from relevant evidence synthesis methodology experts, federal agencies and Congressionally-authorized funders that commission evidence synthesis or use evidence synthesis to inform their work, academic/professional community of researchers and clinicians, clinical specialty and guideline developing societies that conduct their own and/or use evidence synthesis, life sciences industry (such as pharma, bio, devices, diagnostics, and associated scientific support organization), healthcare payers and purchasers who use evidence synthesis to inform healthcare decisions, and patient/consumer groups. One component of this outreach will include a series of public webinars with invited speakers, which will be summarized in a published workshop proceeding.