While ambitious – both in terms of the financial and human resources required, the establishment of a trauma registry system and the use of recognised injury severity and outcome metrics are necessary to enable the systematic assessment the functioning of the trauma system, which then provides the means for identifying system improvements and ultimately ensuring the optimal care of the injured patient. Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions All authors were involved in study conception, interpreting the results and drafting

and revising the paper. MF and JY conducted Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the search and interpreted the original papers. All authors were involved in the design of the classification system. All authors have read and approve of the final version of the manuscript. MF and JY are the guarantors. Pre-publication history The Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-227X/11/18/prepub Supplementary Material Additional file 1: Table S1. Description of categories used to classify identified research papers. Table with a description of categories used to classify identified research Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical papers, including high level subject

domain, primary focus of paper, and subject categorisations. Click Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical here for file(38K, DOC) Additional file 2: Table S2. Number and percent (%) of articles identified by category. Table with number and percent of articles by classification category. Click here for file(38K, DOC) Acknowledgements This study was supported by The George Institute for Global Health, Sydney Australia and Beijing China. Funding support for author Fitzharris was also derived from Monash University Injury Research Institute. The opinions, results and conclusions reported in this paper are Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical those of the authors and are independent from

the funding sources. No endorsement by the funding sources is intended or should be inferred.
Evidence-based medicine is the “…conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions…”[1]. TCL The practice of evidence-based medicine combines individual and organizational experience and expertise with the best available evidence to guide clinical care and system design. The challenge for many health disciplines, including emergency medical services (EMS), is the scarcity of research from which best evidence can be derived [2,3]. EMS has traditionally focused on emergency response to the sick and injured in the prehospital environment, and inter-facility transport.