Group testing, introduced by Dorfman (1943), has been used to reduce costs when estimating the prevalence of a binary characteristic based on a screening test of [Formula: see text] groups that include [Formula: see text] independent individuals in total. If the unknown prevalence is low and the screening test suffers from misclassification, it is also possible to obtain more precise prevalence...

We show that every sequential screening model is equivalent to a standard text book static screening model. We use this result and apply well-established techniques from static screening to obtain solutions for classes of sequential screening models for which standard sequential screening techniques are not applicable. Moreover, we identify the counterparts of well– understood features of the s...

BACKGROUND Meta-research studies investigating methods, systems, and processes designed to improve the efficiency of systematic review workflows can contribute to building an evidence base that can help to increase value and reduce waste in research. This study demonstrates the use of an economic evaluation framework to compare the costs and effects of four variant approaches to identifying eli...

BACKGROUND There is no consensus on whether screening titles alone or titles and abstracts together is the preferable strategy for inclusion of articles in a systematic review. METHODS TWO METHODS OF SCREENING ARTICLES FOR INCLUSION IN A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW WERE COMPARED: titles first versus titles and abstracts simultaneously. Each citation found in MEDLINE or Embase was reviewed by two physic...

BACKGROUND Public adherence to cancer screening guidelines is poor. Patient confusion over multiple recommendations and modalities for cancer screening has been found to be a major barrier to screening adherence. Such problems will only increase as screening guidelines and timetables become individualized. OBJECTIVE We propose to increase compliance with cancer screening through two-way rich ...

BACKGROUND Screening with the guaiac faecal occult blood test (gFOBt) is associated with improved colorectal cancer (CRC) survival, and is offered biennially to men and women aged 60-74 years in England's national Bowel Cancer Screening Programme (BCSP). Uptake of the gFOBt is low, with only 54 % of the eligible population completing the test. Text-message reminders could improve uptake of gFOB...

Introduction Human screening of title and abstracts in a systematic literature review (SLR) is labor intensive time-consuming. In many instances, thousands citations may be retrieved; the vast majority excluded upon screening. Text-mining semi-automates accelerates by identifying patterns relevant irrelevant citations, as labelled screener. One such text-mining tool, Abstrackr, uses an algorith...

BACKGROUND HIV prevalence remains disproportionately high among youth, especially among young men who have sex with men, young people with substance use disorders, and recently incarcerated youth. However, youth may not report behavioral risks because they fear stigma or legal consequences. While routine HIV screening programs have increased testing, current programs are not designed to identif...