Cochrane (organisation)

Cochrane

Motto	Trusted evidence. Informed decisions. Better health.
Formation	1993 (1993)
Type	International NPO
Purpose	Independent research into data about health care
Headquarters	London, England
Region served	Worldwide
Official language	English
Steering Group Co-Chairs	Lisa Bero, Cindy Farquhar
Volunteers	Over 37,000 (2015)
Website	www.cochrane.org

Cochrane, previously known as the Cochrane Collaboration, is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization consisting of a group of more than 37,000 volunteers in more than 130 countries. The group was formed to organize medical research information in a systematic way to facilitate the choices that health professionals, patients, policy makers and others face in health interventions according to the principles of evidence-based medicine.

The group conducts systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health-care interventions and diagnostic tests, which it publishes in The Cochrane Library. A few reviews (in fields such as occupational health) have also studied the results of non-randomized, observational studies.

Cochrane was founded in 1993 under the leadership of Iain Chalmers. It was developed in response to Archie Cochrane's call for up-to-date, systematic reviews of all relevant randomized controlled trials of health care.

Cochrane's suggestion that the methods used to prepare and maintain reviews of controlled trials in pregnancy and childbirth should be applied more widely was taken up by the Research and Development Programme, initiated to support the United Kingdom's National Health Service. Through the NHS R&D programme, led by the first Director of Research and Development Professor Michael Peckham, funds were provided to establish a "Cochrane Centre", to collaborate with others, in the UK and elsewhere, to facilitate systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials across all areas of health care.

Cochrane is currently concentrating on capacity building in health research in individuals, groups, and institutions in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC)s.

The Cochrane logo illustrates a meta-analysis of data from seven randomized controlled trials (RCTs), comparing one health care treatment with a placebo in a forest plot. The diagram shows the results of a systematic review and meta-analysis on inexpensive course of corticosteroid given to women about to give birth too early – the evidence on effectiveness that would have been revealed had the available RCTs been reviewed systematically around 1982. This treatment reduces the odds of the babies of such women dying from the complications of immaturity by 30–50%. Because no systematic review of these trials was published until 1990, most obstetricians had not realized that the treatment was so effective and therefore many premature babies probably suffered or died unnecessarily.