EBM Service: Evidence-based answers provided by general practitioners to questions asked by general practitioners - a project from South Tyrol/Italy

General practices also require more and more evidence-based decision-making. But knowledge is increasing rapidly and guidelines produced to help doctors to find answers to their problems seem to exclude a number of problems that are important in general practices. Here we report on the introduction and activities of an EbM Service provided by general practitioners to answer questions of their colleagues. The aim is to give EBM answers, but also, in doing so, to teach the application of EBM and - in the long run - to enable the users themselves to find EBM answers. The provision of EBM answers is fairly pragmatic: after using the service the inquiring physician should be better informed, i.e., have more evidence-based information, but sometimes this need not be the "ultimate truth" that experts might deliver. EBM answers are published both on the homepage of the College of General Practitioners and in their journal. It took quite a while to implement this service, and the number of those using it has increased slowly but constantly.