Oral History Video Examines Origins, Development and Future of Evidence-Based Medicine

A new video of leaders who gave birth to Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) features valuable oral histories of the EBM movement. Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. JAMA and the BMJ invited those who helped lead the development of EBM to participate in an oral history event and filming. Videos of this event and of interviews with other EBM leaders have been woven together to create “Evidence-Based Medicine: An Oral History”.

The video features EBM leaders’ perspectives on the past, present, and future of EBM, some of the barriers and controversies associated with the EBM movement, and personal reflections of clinical and patient encounters and shared decision making in the context of EBM.

An accompanying editorial by Richard Smith, MBChB, CBE, of the UnitedHealth Chronic Disease Initiative in London, and formerly editor, BMJ, and Drummond Rennie, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and formerly contributing deputy editor, JAMA, discuss evidence-based medicine (EBM) and the important contributions of various individuals. The editorial was published simultaneously in JAMA and the BMJ.