Cochrane and the Epistemonikos Foundation are delighted to announce the launch of our official partnership aimed at improving the knowledge base for making decisions in health care and global health policy.

The close alignment of objectives, values, products, and services between Cochrane and Epistemonikos has existed for some years. Both organizations believe that systematic and rigorous approaches to research synthesis lead to better-informed choices by policymakers, practitioners, and the public, and thus to better health outcomes for people throughout the world.

The Epistemonikos Foundation is a non-profit organization whose core objectives are to bring evidence closer to those making health decisions through technology and innovation, primarily via the Epistemonikos database. The database was established in 2009 and by the end of 2016 is expected to include close to 100,000 systematic reviews.

Cochrane and Epistemonikos wish to continue our history of working together by establishing a long-term collaboration to build on our respective strengths and together develop products and services to support the healthcare community. To this end our organizations have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to structure and focus our collaborative work for the next five years.

Julian Elliott, Cochrane Lead for Evidence Systems, said: ‘Many within Cochrane have been working closely with Epistemonikos for some time and using the great resources provided by the Epistemonikos database. We are thrilled to see this relationship move into a new phase of close and productive partnership and are looking forward to many more joint initiatives.’

These sentiments were echoed by Epistemonikos Co-Founder and Chairman Gabriel Rada, who said: ‘Epistemonikos started as a small project that was born within Cochrane. In some way it was conceived to complement the role of Cochrane, and for the same reason we have a common vision, methods, and ethos. Now the project is mature and ready for greater challenges. We are thrilled to partner Cochrane in this endeavour.’

For more information on the partnership and plans for the future, please contact the Cochrane Central Executive team.

We're posting all the highlights from the 2016 Cochrane Colloquium here - watch this space as we'll continue to update with new stories as we receive them!

Colloquium by the numbers

• 813 participants from 49 countries
• 96 workshops
• 191 posters
• 151 oral presentations

Plenary and AGM videos now available
Videos from all four plenary sessions, including the Annual Cochrane Lecture, as well as the full 2016 Annual General Meeting, are now available on Cochrane's YouTube channel.

Colloquium stories
People who were part of the #CochraneSeoul experience are sharing their stories - read a blog post from the UK-based Evidence Synthesis team, a blog post from Cochrane Croatia, a blog post from Cochrane Australia, and  a Storify of key tweets from a US contributor. And if you've got a story to share, let us know!

2016 Cochrane prize and award winners
Each year Cochrane presents a number of prizes and awards to contributors to recognize contributions to our work and organization made in various ways - find out more about the 2016 selections.

Cochrane Community's response to Strategy to 2020
Cochrane's 2016 Annual General Meeting included a Special Session where the Cochrane Community had the opportunity to share their stories of responding to the challenges of Strategy to 2020. As well as live presentations from a selection of Cochrane Groups from around the world, the session included this video highlighting just a few stories among many of what Strategy to 2020 means to Cochrane Groups and their work within local contexts:

Steering Group decisions from the 2016 Cochrane Colloquium
Read about the many decision coming from the meeting of the Steering Group.

Seoul Colloquium Pictures
Browse through pictures taken at the Colloquium! You are welcome to use these pictures on your Cochrane website, newsletters, and social media. If you have pictures you would like to contribute, please contact mumoquit@cochrane.org

Andrew Herxheimer Memorial Meeting
Friends’ Meeting House, St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
Tuesday 15 November 2016, 10am for a 10.30 start
 
We very much hope that you will be able to join us on Tuesday 15 November 2016 to remember our colleague Andrew Herxheimer (1925-2016). We will celebrate his extraordinary contributions, in particular to the fields of pharmacology, patients’ experiences, and The Cochrane Collaboration.

We will also take great pleasure in remembering his warmth, charm and humour, his editorial skills and enthusiasm for plain English, and of course the constant puns. Indeed, the Guardian obituary writer noted that Andrew used ‘words as precision tools’ and ‘punned in four languages’.

There will be talks and photographs, personal reflections from Andrew’s daughters Sophie and Charlotte, and from his wife, Christine.

Confirmed speakers include Iain Chalmers, Nicky Britten, Anita Hardon, Gabriele Lucius-Hoene, Trish Greenhalgh,  Jeffrey Aronson and Sue Ziebland.
  
To cover the costs, including venue hire, coffee, lunch, and tea we are inviting people to pay £45 a head. Any money that is left over will be donated to the DIPEx charity, of which Andrew was the co-founder (with Ann McPherson) and a trustee until his death.

See here to book and pay for your place. [old link removed]

Where financial constraints, or the use of online booking, would be a barrier to participation, please contact Elizabeth Woolliams for assistance (01865  617844, elizabeth.woolliams@phc.ox.ac.uk).

Cochrane Complementary Medicine is pleased to announce our 2016 bursary scheme, made possible through funds from the US National Institutes of Health, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. The purpose of this bursary scheme is to ensure that reviews relevant to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are completed and published in The Cochrane Library. 

Funding offered
Two review proposals in the amount of $5,000 USD each will be funded. The funding must be paid directly to the individual bursary recipient; it cannot be paid to the recipient's institution. 

Eligibility requirements

• Review must be registered with a Cochrane Review Group, and the relevant protocol/review must already be published in The Cochrane Library;

• the topic of the review must relate to CAM (see scope in Call for Applications); and

• bursaries will be targeted to reviews for which substantial progress has already been made and whose completion has been stalled due to a lack of funding.

Timeline
Completed application forms should be e-mailed to Susan Wieland by 29 November 2016. Forms sent by postal delivery or fax will not be accepted. Successful candidates will be notified by 10 January 2017. Funds will be distributed to successful applicants in a single installment, after the award notification. Funds must be paid to the individual recipients of the bursary, and not to their institutions.

For more information (e.g., the assessment criteria, additional details about eligibility and application procedures), please see the full Call for Applications and Application Form. 

Please find below the main decisions made by Steering Group at its meeting in Seoul. If you have any questions about these decisions, please contact your Steering Group Representative.

• Co-Chair election: The CSG elected Cindy Farquhar and approval of her appointment would be sought from the Cochrane members at the AGM.
• Structure and Function Review: The CSG approved the structure and function recommendations. For CRGs, Steering Group will work closely to support the Editor-in-Chief on the CRGs sustainability review and will provide support in completing this review in a shorter timeline.
• Governance: The CSG approved the final policies to implement the new Cochrane Governing Board and Council, should the members adopt the proposed changes to Cochrane’s Articles of Association at the AGM.
• 2017 Targets: The CSG approved the proposed Strategy to 2020 Target areas for 2017. Final Targets will be developed in consultation with executives and submitted for approval in December 2016, alongside the Plan & Budget.
• Spokesperson Policy: The revised Cochrane Spokesperson Policy was approved.
• CPAC: The CSG approved the disbanding of the Cochrane Policy Advisory Committee and the formation of the Cochrane Events Network.
• Auditors: The CSG approved the recommendation from the Finance, Investment and Audit Committee, a CSG sub-group, to appoint Sayer Vincent as Cochrane’s auditors for the 2016 financial year, for ratification at the AGM.
• Rehabilitation Field: The registration of a Cochrane Rehabilitation Field was approved.

The agenda and open acess papers can be found here. The full minutes will be available soon.

The next CSG face-to-face meeting is 5-7 April, 2017, in Geneva.

We want to share some exciting news about changes in development for the Cochrane Library! We are developing an enhanced Cochrane Library with greater functionality that makes it easier for users to discover and use Cochrane content in their decision-making. Over the course of this year, we are redeveloping all aspects of the Cochrane Library to improve user experience.

The first changes will roll out in early 2017 and include: enhancements to the display and new features for Cochrane Reviews and other articles; enhancements to CENTRAL; linking of the CDSR and CENTRAL; an improved search and discovery interface.

We will also be including a new Spanish version of the Cochrane Library, incorporating the translated Cochrane Review content from La Bibliotheca Cochrane Plus, with a dedicated search functionality. The Cochrane Library will also incorporate Cochrane Clinical Answers, with over 1200 articles linked to Cochrane Reviews. Finally, a federated search feature will enable searches of other systematic reviews via Epistemonikos.

This project will form a major contribution to our Strategy to 2020 goal of making Cochrane the ‘home of evidence’ to inform health decision-making, building greater recognition of our work, and becoming the leading advocate for evidence-informed health care.

The Cochrane Library will maintain its familiar look-and-feel while improving the overall user experience. Researching user needs and stakeholder insights is a key component of development. We are doing this research through one-to-one user testing with Cochrane Library users and focus groups with members of the Cochrane community.

We are also taking this opportunity to remove several databases (DARE, HTA, EED) from the Cochrane Library collection as they are no longer being updated or were not well used currently. The Cochrane Methodology Register will be migrated and archived on the Cochrane Methods website. The About The Cochrane Collaboration database will also be retired; further information for groups currently published modules will be circulated in the next few weeks.

2017 is the beginning of an exciting new chapter for the Cochrane Library. We look forward to working with you to ensure it provides the best possible experience for our users. More information will follow as we near a launch date in early 2017.

Any questions please contact Deborah Pentesco-Gilbert (dpentesc@wiley.com), Editorial Director, Wiley, or Harriet MacLehose (hmaclehose@cochrane.org), Senior Editor, Cochrane.

The Agenda and Open Access papers for the Cochrane Steering Group meeting in Seoul are now available.

Cochrane Community members may be particularly  interested in the following papers:

CEU Report on Review Quality

Governance Restructure Papers

Knowledge Translation Strategy Update

Membership Update

Spokesperson Policy

Structure and Function Papers

Targeted Updates Project Report

Update on Partnerships

The IKMD team is pleased to announce an update to Archie effective 4 October 2016.

The update includes several new features; most noticeable to contributors will be the Archie log-in page, which is now Cochrane-branded. This change reflects that Archie is one of several systems to which your account provides access.

Other changes relate to new Cochrane Library developments, as well as a number of minor improvements and bug fixes. For a full breakdown of the new features and functionality available in Archie, please see the Archie Updates section of the Community website.

Should you come across any bugs or errors, please use the Archie Problem Reporting Form.

We value your input on Cochrane software, including Archie. We invite you to post your suggestions on our Archie Ideas forum, where others can vote and comment on these suggestions.

‘It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.’ World famous philosopher (and sometime baseball player) Yogi Berra got it spot on. We’re all constantly making judgements – large and small – about the future based on our knowledge, experience, values, and intellectual analysis, but also our ‘gut instincts’ and feelings, when we can’t know whether they will be successful, irrelevant or a failure. So it’s always pleasing when you seem to be getting something right that was very far from a ‘sure thing’ when you first decided to set your course – especially if the stakes are high.

This is why the news that Cochrane has received a grant of USD $1.15 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the ongoing technological development of our ‘next generation evidence system’ is worthy of special celebration. Three years ago Cochrane’s Steering Group (CSG) agreed to invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in a multi-year Linked Data project to explore new ways that the data underpinning Cochrane evidence could be tagged, connected, and used in future to unleash much more of its value and help produce dynamic new forms of evidence. There was no guarantee of a successful outcome for Cochrane; we might be wasting our money. As if to stress the potentially fictional, starry-eyed nature of the initiative, its concept stage had been called the ‘Star Trek’ project!

A year later, in 2014, the CSG gave a further green light to another ambitious technology project. Project Transform won the CSG’s Game Changer strategic investment competition, an initiative established specifically to harness the innovation within Cochrane and identify an expensive project anticipated to have a transformative long-term impact on our work. Another £600,000 of Cochrane’s revenues is being invested on Project Transform’s development of a platform and processes that – amongst other things – allow us to harness technology and our worldwide network of contributors and supporters to deliver more efficient content production, information retrieval, and re-use of our data. One of the reasons we chose Transform as our game changer was because of the investments we were already making in the Linked Data project, and the way we thought these would complement and support each other.

Earlier this year the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) awarded Transform a matching grant to the money Cochrane was investing, making it a £1 million project. This latest grant provides another £880,000 to help develop new technology, ontology, structures, machine learning, and crowd engagement to change the ways data are used in the area of child health. Cochrane’s Child Health Field and Pregnancy and Childbirth and Neonatal Review Groups will be funded over the next six months to annotate all of their Reviews and help deliver the project, which we hope will prove the concept of what we have been designing and building for the last four years.

We hope there will be more grants to come that support this work, but for the next year we’ll be focused on delivering these mission-critical technology projects. We'll also be building the new partnerships we need to help us deliver our goals of making Cochrane the ‘home of evidence’ and offering new products and services that, in addition to Cochrane Reviews, will help to sustain the organization. There is no room for complacency, and we still cannot be sure that our plans and dreams will succeed in future – after all, as Yogi said, it’s hard to predict – but Linked Data and Project Transform are wonderful examples right now of the innovation, brilliant thinking, daring, and enthusiasm of our volunteers, staff, and governance that have characterized Cochrane in the past, and continue to do so in the present.

Mark Wilson, CEO
Cochrane Community
September 2016

Cochrane’s newest Field, Global Ageing, launches on 1 October 2016. This field is the natural evolution of the Cochrane Healthcare of Older People Field. Read more about Cochrane Global Ageing in an interview with Managing Editor and Co-Director, Sue Marcus, on Cochrane.org.

For more information, please see 'Introducing Cochrane Global Ageing' on Cochrane.org

Visit the Cochrane Global Ageing website

Read the Cochrane Library Editorial 'Introducing Cochrane Global Ageing: towards a new era of evidence'