Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients (Sackett et al., 1996). The practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research (Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine Oxford, United Kingdom).

Evidence based medicine (EBM) has been defined as the a process of turning clinical problems into questions and then systematically locating, appraising, and using contemporaneous research findings as the basis for clinical decisions.' The phrase ‘evidence-based’  was coined by David Eddy, an American healthcare analyst, in the 1980s, and the term ‘evidence-based medicine’ was first used by Gordon Guyatt, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at McMaster Medical School in Canada, in 1990 to label this clinical learning strategy.

The practice of evidence-based medicine means integrating clinical expertise and the best available evidence from systematic research with the ideas, concerns and expectations of individual patients. This includes clinically relevant research into the accuracy and precision of diagnostic tests, the power of prognostic markers, and the efficacy and safety of therapeutic, rehabilitative, and preventative regimens. EBM is not restricted to randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses, but should involve appraising the best evidence available with which to answer clinical questions...