• The evidence base for integrated care is diffuse and finding relevant literature is a significant challenge
• It is hard to intuitively search large databases such as PubMed efficiently and effectively due to the volume of data.
• Even experienced searchers can develop poor searches or searches containing mistakes
• Search filters save time by providing a pre-written search
• The search is developed under the guidance of international experts in the field.
• It is ‘evidence based’, meaning it was developed experimentally according to a well-established methodology for developing, testing, and validating the final product.
• You will have the flexibility to maximise recall or precision, depending on your needs.

• PubMed is a free to use, health-focused database containing millions of peer reviewed articles
• PubMed is produced by the National Library of Medicine (US) and is arguably the most valuable research tool available to clinicians as well as biomedical and health researchers and policy makers
• PubMed facilitates the development of one-click hyperlink searches which can be embedded in any webpage.

• No. ICS can only find articles that are held in the PubMed database. The PubMed database only indexes articles from journals in its discipline. It will not include articles relating to health published in journals whose main focus is not health and medicine. Other databases can hold unique literature.
• IC is a very complex, multi-faceted topic with no one shared definition. This makes it difficult to create a comprehensive search guaranteed to find everything on the topic, even within a single database.
• Important literature about integrated care may not be processed in a peer-reviewed format.

Use this guide to create your own PubMed topic search and combine it with ICS for best search results.