10-year review highlights global use of BestBETs for Vets

CURRENT BRIEF VERSION: A 10-year review of BestBETs for Vets, an open-access database of veterinary critically appraised topics from the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Evidence-based Veterinary Medicine, offers a snapshot of how one evidence-synthesis tool is being used in practice and education. According to the study abstract, the review examined 96 CATs across 27 topic areas and found that canine and reproduction topics were the most common, while users from more than 190 countries accessed the site, most often by going there directly. BestBETs for Vets was launched in 2014 and reached its 100th published BestBET in 2024, underscoring its staying power as a niche but global evidence resource. More broadly, CATs are not unique to veterinary evidence summaries: in pharmacovigilance, “causality assessment tools” are also used to judge whether a medicine likely caused an adverse event in an individual patient, with a recent scoping review identifying 18 such tools developed or updated between 2008 and 2023, most of them algorithm-based and some tailored to settings such as pediatrics, neonatal intensive care, vaccine safety, drug-induced liver injury, and severe cutaneous adverse reactions. (nottingham.ac.uk)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, the paper is less about a single clinical finding and more about infrastructure for evidence-based care. CATs are designed to translate clinical questions into concise, structured summaries of the best available evidence, helping busy teams make decisions without starting from scratch in the primary literature every time. At the same time, the broader CAT landscape shows how structured assessment tools are also being refined in other evidence-heavy areas such as adverse drug reaction causality, where newer tools are increasingly context-specific and may eventually incorporate biomarkers, medication-error checks, product quality issues, and adherence to risk-minimization measures. That matters in a profession where keeping up with research is difficult, and where evidence syntheses such as BestBETs for Vets, RCVS Knowledge Summaries, and similar resources are increasingly positioned as practical tools for clinicians, nurses, technicians, journal clubs, and training programs. (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

What to watch: The next question is whether usage data like this leads to broader investment in veterinary evidence resources, updated topic coverage, and stronger integration into clinical workflows and workforce training—and, in parallel, whether more specialized assessment tools emerge for areas like adverse-event causality where one-size-fits-all approaches may be less useful. (nottingham.ac.uk)