GLOSSARY
OF TERMS
     
     
I
Incidence
The
number of new cases of a disease, or event, in a population
during a specific period of time.
Index
Medicus
Catalogue
of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), and
a periodical index to the medical literature. It is available
in printed form, or electronically as MEDLINE.
Individual
patient data
In
systematic reviews this term refers to the availability of raw
data for each study participant in each included trial, as opposed
to aggregate data (summary data for the comparison groups in
each study). Reviews using individual patient data require
collaboration of the investigators who conducted the original
trials, who must provide the necessary data.
Intention-to-treat
An
intention-to-treat analysis is one in which all the participants
in a trial are analyzed according to the intervention
to which they were allocated, whether they received it or not.
Intention-to-treat analyses are favored in assessments of effectiveness
as they mirror the noncompliance and treatment changes
that are likely to occur when the intervention is used
in practice, and because of the risk of attrition bias when
participants are excluded from the analysis.
Internet
Network
of millions of computers worldwide. Computers on the Internet
use compatible communication standards and share the ability
to contact each other and share data. Users of the Internet
communicate via electronic mail (e-mail), via Telnet (a process
which allows a person to log in to a remote host), and
via FTP.
See also World
Wide Web.
Intervention
study
See
Clinical
trial.
Intramural
Within
(the walls or boundaries of) a community or institution (e.g.
a university). Used to distinguish from "external"
(extramural)
sources of support (such as funding).
L
LILACS
(Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature)
An electronic database based on a regional database of medical
and science literature. It is compiled by the Latin American
and Caribbean Center for Health Science Information, a unit
of the Pan American Health Organization.
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