Now called ‘Cochrane’ this important collaboration was founded in 1993 in response to Archie Cochrane‘s call in the 1970s for up-to-date, systematic reviews of all relevant randomized controlled trials of health care. The collaboration now numbers over 30,000 researchers in over 100 countries, organised into over 40 regional centres and over 50 subject-specific review groups. Its aim is to organise medical research information systematically to support decision-making (e.g. to adopt new interventions) by health professionals, patients, policy makers and others, according to the principles of evidence-based medicine. Members use standardised methods to undertake high quality and updateable systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials of interventions, to answer the question: ‘What can be concluded from the totality of the RCT evidence?’ Reviews are all stored in the Cochrane Library. The Collaboration has served as a focal point for development and implementation of good quality research methods in many countries, and some reviews have gone beyond RCTs to non-randomised study designs.
How to cite: Cochrane Collaboration [online]. (2016). York; York Health Economics Consortium; 2016. https://yhec.co.uk/glossary/cochrane-collaboration/