Tools for assessing quality of studies investigating health interventions using real-world data: a literature review and content analysis.

Objectives: We aimed to identify existing appraisal tools for non-randomised studies of interventions (NRSIs) and to compare the criteria that the tools provide at the quality-item level.

Design: Literature review through three approaches: systematic search of journal articles, snowballing search of reviews on appraisal tools and grey literature search on websites of health technology assessment (HTA) agencies.

Data Sources: Systematic search: Medline; Snowballing: starting from three articles (D'Andrea , Quigley and Faria ); Grey literature: websites of European HTA agencies listed by the International Network of Agencies for Health Technology Assessment.