A rapid review is conducted as an alternative to a systematic review when a review needs to be completed quickly.
Timeframes for conducting rapid reviews are considerably less than systematic reviews.
Rapid reviews follow the same methods and protocols as a systematic review, although components can be simplified and can be omitted if required. Which components are simplified or omitted are often determined by the nature of the topic or the types of information wanted by the organisation for which the review is being conducted, so there is no one correct way to conduct these types of reviews.
The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions states that systematic reviews have the following characteristics, and these also apply to rapid reviews:
- a clearly stated set of objectives with pre-defined eligibility criteria for studies;
- an explicit, reproducible methodology;
- a systematic search that attempts to identify all studies that meet the eligibility criteria;
- an assessment of the validity of the findings of the included studies, for example through the assessment of risk of bias; and
- a systematic presentation, and synthesis, of the characteristics and findings of the included studies.
Rapid reviews can be used for:
- new and emerging topics
- updating previously completed reviews
- policy development, implementation or assessment.
Rapid reviews are often completed internally for organisations and are often not published.
The following scoping review paper examines different methods used to conduct rapid reviews and provides details of a variety of ways that stages of the review may be adapted or omitted for rapid reviews.
