ABSTRACT
In 1972 the Scottish epidemiologist Archie Cochrane (1909-88) suggested that critical, updated summaries by specialty of all randomised controlled trials (RCT) should be organised. The idea was adopted by a group of 77 doctors who in 1993 co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration. During the subsequent years the collaboration has expanded enormously, with several thousand people engaged in Cochrane centres, review groups, fields and networks. The collaboration promotes evidence-based medicine (EBM), which can be defined as ‘the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients’. While the Cochrane Collaboration initially focused on clinical issues, its scope has been widened to encompass educational methods, health services research, health policy analysis, etc.
