Dunja Dreesens

30 the tools assigned. The tool types were described according to the following characteristics, if available, extracted from the data sources: - Definition or description of tool is available on the website; - Target group of knowledge tool: - Patients, healthcare professionals, both, or others such as policy advisors, government and insurers? - If targeted at healthcare professionals, mono- or multidisciplinary? - Development process: - Patient or public involved? - Authorisation process described or mentioned? - Publicly accessible? The aim was to characterise the tool as generic or specific – generic means that the tool can be used or reused for different care subjects and is developed by various organisations; specific means that the tool is limited in its options for use or reuse by others or is developed by one organisation only. As this proved difficult to indicate in a table, we decided to reflect on the characteristics of these tools in the running text. Again, the co-authors verified the subset of the data extraction. They each selected at least 15 tools at random and checked the scoring. In case of disagreement, we discussed the extraction until we reached a consensus. The first author then entered the final scores for all tools. Results The search yielded 126 tool types, of which we included 67 in the review. Data sources We started by searching the websites of the 17 selected organisations. During this search, 10 additional organisations were found via snowballing; three of those organisations that met the selection criteria of the purposive sampled organisations were added to the search and their websites were subsequently searched. Identification, selection of tools and data extraction The search started with 48 search terms. During the search, which took place from September 2012 to April 2013, we added six related terms (marked with an asterisk in appendix B). Hits were listed numerically per organisation, together with the source and description if available. This led to a list containing 126 tool types. Hits which appeared to represent a tool were tentatively put on the list. Descriptions of the tools were either limited or not always available on the websites. Additional inquiries with the organisations, data sources and Google search were used to fill the gaps, but sometimes information remained unknown. After applying the inclusion criteria of the flow chart, 74 tool types remained. However, seven of these were considered synonymous and were removed, leaving 67 tool types (figure 2). The inclusion reliability and data extraction verification by the co-authors did not lead to any discrepancies. This lack of information, even after additional searches and inquires meant that it was not always possible to extract the tools’ characteristics. Information on characteristics such as authorisation and patient or public involvement were the most difficult to determine. Chapter 2