We’re currently doing our monthly update highlighting new content and when doing these, some topics stand out; no idea why.  This month there have been a few on screen time in children:

The top entry, from PROSPERO, is a systematic review protocol exploring the association of screen time and sleep. The second (EPPI Centre) is an ‘evidence map’, while the final entry (CPS) is a clinical guideline.

I was interested to see that the guideline has a distinct section on sleep and if you dig deeper through the documents you seen overlap in a number of places.  Is this good or bad? I suspect that for the producers of the reviews there are ‘logical’ reasons for the content of their product. But I can only think, from a decision makers position, it’s unhelpful.  I’m not sure what the answer is, well not entirely.  Throw in to the mix all the other publications on the topic (see this Trip search as an example) and it could be seen as a mess!

At Trip we’re focused on supporting decision makers to take evidence-based/informed decisions. So, is the answer to, somehow, extract the actionable messages from these very long documents? Sounds reasonable to me, but it opens up additional issues – such as who are the stakeholders, what are their decisions and what do they need to make them!?

As seems so often the response – it’s something to ponder (is this a bit like saying ‘more research needed’)!