Standardizing: The Introduction of Evidence-Based Methods into Drug Abuse Treatment

Today’s society is often called the knowledge society, and there is a strong conception that what we do must be based on the best knowledge available. Technological development contributes towards the aim that knowledge must be inscribable and storable so that it may be transferred and used in other contexts (i.e., that knowledge must be transferrable in time and space). This is also noticeable in the care sector, where the notion of evidence-based medicine (EBM) has had a major impact. EBM emphasizes that professional work in medicine should be based on scientific criteria in order to reduce uncertainty in clinical practices (Learmonth and Harding, 2006). The basic idea is that the treatments and methods used must be based on the best knowledge available and that it is possible to produce universally valid knowledge. It is thus a matter of how scientific knowledge can be translated into practice. Doing systematic reviews can also be seen as a response to the information overload characterizing today’s society. EBM, then, constitutes a strategy for creating overview and transparency in the flow of knowledge. Additionally, it is becoming more and more common for knowledge, which is summarized and translated into guidelines and methods, to be inscribed into computer-based programs. The notion of evidence-basing has also gained an increasingly prominent role as regards policy formulation, research agendas and during the allocation of financial resources, enabling us now to talk sooner about evidence-based activities in health care (Lambert et al., 2006).