Abstract

Evidence-based applications of resources remain one of the greatest challenges faced by governments, businesses, and policymakers. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) evaluated ten large programs, which together cost more than $10 billion/year, through randomised control trials – the highest standard of evidence-based practice (EBP). The evaluation found that nine of them had ‘weak or no positive effects’ on their participants. Many programs were not evaluated at all. In January 2019, U.S. President signed the ‘Foundations for Evidence-based Policy Making Act’ into law. A USAID (US Agency for International Development) study looked at 43 blockchain projects and companies claiming to have solved various problems using distributed ledgers. The study found that almost no company was willing to share their results and MERL (monitoring, evaluation, research and learning) processes. Other observational data revealed that 80–90% of blockchain-based token offering projects failed to deliver on their promises, a prediction also made by Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum blockchain, in 2017. The concept of evidence-based blockchain (EBB) was first introduced by Naqvi in 2018. We conducted an evaluation of 517 blockchain firms against PCIO framework of evidence-based practice: Problem – Comparison – Intervention and Outcomes. We define the fundamentals of EBB (Ask, Acquire, Appraise, Apply, Assess), provide a review of the literature on EBB, report findings of our study and propose an Assessment Framework of Evidence Based Blockchain.

Highlights

  • Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the idea that professional practices should be based on a combination of critical thinking and the best available evidence [9]

  • Research showed that cognitive biases and behavioural heuristics can influence the decision support systems of professionals [11, 12]

  • Cochrane observed that patients were dying unnecessarily and expressed his concerns over the scarcity of scientific evidence used by the NHS to evaluate the effectiveness of therapies and the use of available resources [15]

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Summary

Context and history of EBP

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is the idea that professional practices should be based on a combination of critical thinking and the best available evidence [9]. Cochrane observed that patients were dying unnecessarily and expressed his concerns over the scarcity of scientific evidence used by the NHS to evaluate the effectiveness of therapies and the use of available resources [15]. Over the past three decades, the idea of EBP has spread across most disciplines, such as: medical education [17], management [18], social policy [19], criminal justice [20], cybersecurity [21], nursing [22], employment [23], probation services [24] and blockchain [25]

Timeline
Centres advancing EBP
What is the evidence for EBP?
Why EBB?
How to practice EBB?
Search for the evidence and look for answers to the question
What is EBB?
ACQUIRE
APPRAISE
Study design and methodology
Types of evidence
Problem
Comparison
Intervention
Outcomes Q10
Conclusion
Limitations
Discussion
Recommendations
Findings
References:
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