Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 18 September 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Update on the CervicalCheck Screening Programme: Discussion

Photo of Louise O'ReillyLouise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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Is it international best practice for reviewers not to have any of that knowledge in advance of conducting the review? People have appeared before us to tell us about the potential for review bias and we are aware that this is an issue. In this case, would I be right in suggesting there is an increased chance of review bias in the RCOG review by virtue of the fact that while the reviewers would not necessarily have all of the information, they have some of it? Does that in some way undermine the result? I apologise, as "undermine" is probably the wrong word. Dr. McKenna knows what I mean. If it is best practice that a review be completely blinded, will the fact a review is not cause an issue?