History of QUADAS

The original QUADAS tool was developed through a collaborative project between  the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, and the Academic Medical Centre at the University of Amsterdam.  It was funded through the HTA programme and was published in 2003.

Since its development QUADAS has been used in a large number of systematic reviews.  A modified version of QUADAS, with items related to the quality of reporting removed, has been adopted for use by the Cochrane Collaboration and is recommended for use in all Cochrane DTA reviews.  QUADAS has also been recommended for use by NICE and AHRQ.  Our own experience, anecdotal reports, and feedback via Cochrane suggested some problems with the current version of QUADAS.   We therefore started the process of updating QUADAS in January 2010.