Clinical research over the last 30 years has been characterised by evidence-based medicine (EBM). Like a paradigm shift, all decision-making processes in medicine, including the development of guidelines in favour of statistics-based biomedicine, have been aligned with the latest criteria and the state of EBM-based research.
Notwithstanding the many valuable findings, this system also contains tricky sources of error and a variety of misguided approaches that are often not immediately recognisable at first glance. For this reason, the first section is dedicated to an in-depth review of evidence-based medicine (EBM) in its development.
Starting from the original concept and the ethical principles of EBM, the main research methods such as randomised controlled trials (RCTs), pragmatic controlled trials (PCTs), cohort and case studies, meta-analyses and systematic reviews are explained in a concise manner and weighted in terms of their informative value. This is followed by an overview of the current state of EBM research and an epistemological evaluation of its possibilities and limitations.
In the second section, the concept of cogniton-based medicine (CBM) is explained in a clear form and using practical examples. The development of this concept, which emerged via the turn of the millennium, can depict and analyse the insight-based competencies of everyday practice like no other. At the same time, CBM provides a phenomenologically based, extremely precise set of instruments for placing individual case decisions on a scientifically substantiated basis.
In the third section, current research on psycho-neuro-immunology will be presented in detail, as it provides essential insights into the basic understanding of biological regulation as well as important consequences and, in particular, meaningful improvements for the further development of medical research.