DUETs There are many important uncertainties about the effects of treatments. To help ensure that treatments are likely to do more good than harm, these gaps in knowledge must be identified and those deemed sufficiently important must be addressed in research. Research on the effects of treatments too often fails to address questions that matter to patients, and to the clinicians to whom they turn for help. For this reason, the Database of Uncertainties about the Effects of Treatments (DUETs) gives priority to identifying and publishing unanswered questions about the effects of treatments which have been asked by patients and clinicians, while also noting therapeutic uncertainties identified through systematic reviews, clinical guidelines, and other formal mechanisms.

My interest in clinicial uncertainties stemmed from the a frequent question we received - the frequency of vitamin B12 injections in pernicious anaemia.  In the UK the recommendation was every 3 months, while in North America it's every month.  Why the discrepancy and where's the evidence?  We have never been able to find an RCT comparing the 2 different schedules.  One thing for sure is that we get more comments about 'patients come back well before the 3 months asking for another injection as they're feeling tired again'. 

In the middle of 2008, to compliment DUETs (and make it more my style) TRIP will be releasing something called 'The Tag Cloud of Clinical Uncertainty'