Challenges in developing national orthopedic health research agendas in the Netherlands: process overview and recommendations

Abstract

Growing demand for clinical research to improve evidence-based medicine in daily medical practice led to healthcare evaluation, which assesses the effectiveness of the existing care. The first step is identifying and prioritizing the most important evidence uncertainties. A health research agenda (HRA) can be valuable and helps determine funding and resource allocation, aiding researchers and policymakers to design successful research programs and implement the results in daily medical practice. We provide an overview of the development process of the first 2 HRAs within orthopedic surgery in the Netherlands and the following research process. In addition, we developed a checklist with recommendations for the future development of an HRA. This perspective guides the development of high- quality and widely supported nationwide HRAs, including preparatory actions. This improves the uptake of evidence uncertainties in a successful research program and disseminates evidence-based literature in daily medical practice to improve patient care.