Professor Emeritus David L. Sackett, Developer of Evidence Based Medicine

Sackett obtained his medical degree at the University of Illinois (Champaign, USA) and was drafted into the US Public Health Service in 1962 as a result of the Cuban missile crisis. He received a master’s degree in epidemiology from Harvard University (Boston, MA, USA), and became interested in how the methods of epidemiology could be applied to clinical medicine, calling the combination clinical epidemiology. In 1968, the 32 year old Sackett founded Canada’s first department of clinical epidemiology and biostatistics at McMaster University (Hamilton, ON, Canada), coining the term EBM.

He remained at McMaster University until 1994, when he left to found the international Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). He officially retired from academia and clinical practice in 1999, and returned to Canada to establish the Trout Research & Education Centre at McMaster. During his career, he was instrumental in developing EBM, a medical approach based on scientific evidence and critical appraisal rather than conventional wisdom.

He developed and mentored a new breed of applied clinician-scientists, and worked with them to create and disseminate EBM throughout the world. His collaborative research teams were the first to validate the efficacy of aspirin and carotid endarterectomy for patients with threatened stroke, to develop effective strategies for helping hypertensive patients, and to generate compelling evidence of the effectiveness of nurse practitioners. He published 10 books, about 50 book chapters, and over 400 papers in medical and scientific journals.

“David Sackett was a true transformer of health care. He questioned established beliefs, and explored emerging areas,” said Holger Schünemann, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the McMaster School of Medicine. “His legacy is carried forward through his influential role on clinical trials, systematic reviews, evidence-based medicine and health education worldwide.”

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University of Illinois
McMaster University
University of Oxford