A literature search is a systematic thorough search of all types of literature ( eg. Books, peer-reviewed articles, etc). Structured literature reviews are essential for the clinical evaluation of the medical devices. Medical device manufacturers need to plan and execute a dedicated strategy for literature monitoring, triage, and analysis, and the results of the analysis must translate into decisions that minimize risk.
The key is to select a research informatics solution that includes a literature database with appropriate medical device coverage, in terms of content and indexing.
The search strategy used for monitoring literature must be broad enough to ensure that no essential information is missed, but still allow precise identification of relevant results. This can involve the use of search features such as filters to narrow down the result set, subheadings based on key concepts such as device adverse effects or device comparison, and triage and analysis methods to identify the most relevant literature. The results themselves are generally in the form of a list of citations or data with descriptive indexing tags and other key information. If a citation is deemed useful, the full-text article can be obtained for detailed analysis.
