Evidence-based medicine
Quality Management
Definition. Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence, integrated with clinical expertise and patient values, in decisions about individual patients.
Explanation
Sackett and colleagues set out this definition and stressed that evidence complements, not replaces, clinical judgement (Sackett et al., 1996; Sackett, 1998). Its methods now extend to other fields, including environmental health (Woodruff & Sutton, 2011).
Future physicians’ digital competences and beliefs about AI shape how they will practise evidence-based medicine (Wagner et al., 2025).
Related concepts
Evidence-based management Clinical practice guideline Systematic review GRADE approach Randomized controlled trial (RCT)
Read on The Health Topics
- Evidence-Based Medicine: Practice and History
- Bridging Clinical and Environmental Health Through Evidence-Based Medicine
- Digital Health, AI, and Evidence-Based Medicine in Future Physicians
References
Sackett, D. L. (1998). Editorial: Evidence-Based Medicine. Spine, 23 (10), 1085-1086
Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M. C., Gray, J. A. M., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: What it is and what it isn’t. BMJ, 312(7023), 71–72. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.312.7023.71
Wagner, G., Ringeval, M., Raymond, L., & Paré, G. (2025). Digital health competences and AI beliefs as conditions for the practice of evidence-based medicine: a study of prospective physicians in Canada. Medical Education Online, 30, 2459910. https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2025.2459910
Woodruff, T. J., Sutton, P., & The Navigation Guide Work Group. (2011). An Evidence-Based Medicine Methodology To Bridge The Gap Between Clinical And Environmental Health Sciences. Health Affairs, 30 (5), 931–937. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2010.1219
Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Evidence-based medicine. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/evidence-based-medicine/
Articles that discuss this concept
13 articles on The Health Topics mention this concept. Most relevant first.
- Evidence-Based Medicine: Practice and History 5
- Digital Health, AI, and Evidence-Based Medicine in Future Physicians 3
- Bridging Clinical and Environmental Health Through Evidence-Based Medicine 3
- Do Hospital Accreditation Standards Rest on Solid Evidence? A Systematic Evidence Mapping of 1,599 Standards Reveals Structural Tensions 3
- AI-Assisted Systematic Literature Reviews: A GPT-4 System 2
- PROMs/PREMs Implementation: Barriers and Enablers Umbrella Review 1
- Medical Students’ Attitudes Toward Science and Research Methodology 1
- Issues in Translation Methodology: External Validity and Generalization 1
- Evaluating Research Methodology Workshops: Kirkpatrick’s Model in Practice 1
- Bridging Behavioral Science and Workplace Practice 1
- Navigating LLMs in Healthcare: Pitfalls and Potentials 1
- The Limits Of Explicit Criteria: An Epistemic-Tension Analysis of Donabedian’s 1981 Text, a Reverse Reading Through AGREE–GRADE–NICE, and a Counterfactual Interpretation for the Machine-Learning Era 1