Decision-making in health care is increasingly dependent on synthesized and summarized evidence from primary studies. Well-conducted, up-to-date systematic reviews provide the best evidence to answer healthcare questions and research synthesis has become a research discipline in its own right, with methods, and a body of scientific research underpinning the methods.

Researchers, clinicians, and public health policy makers can use findings from up-to-date, robust reviews to inform their thinking. For researchers, this is an assessment of the research gaps, and a rigorous sum of all relevant research to inform their research designs. For clinicians, this identifies the most appropriate treatments. For public health policy specialists, this might be a reliable assessment of what is known about the benefits and harms of various public health policies.

With the massive uptake in the methods of research synthesis, there is a need for researchers to know how to identify, read, appraise, interpret, and conduct systematic reviews.