The Forest and the Trees: Evidence-Based Medicine in the Age of Information

In 2005, John Hamilton² wrote in the Journal on how best to practice evidence-based medicine, namely develop an answerable question from a clinical situation and then work your way down a hierarchy of evidence to identify the best available evidence to inform your clinical decision. He advised formulating each clinical question requiring the use of evidence as population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and timing (PICOT). Actually, Hamilton …