Health Evidence™ has a new look! The healthevidence.org online repository of 4,600+ quality-rated public health relevant reviews (including 700+ Cochrane Reviews) has implemented website updates to improve the user experience. Enhanced features include a responsive design, which enables easy searching by desktop or mobile, and removal of the user login. Now you can search on the go – by phone or tablet, without needing to remember your password. Registered users may continue to login to benefit from the additional search features linked to your profile, including the ability to save searches and export results, save or email articles, and enable our monthly tailored evidence service.

Since launching Health Evidence^TM in 2005, we continue to seek feedback from public health professionals at all decision making levels in all provinces and territories in Canada, and to integrate your suggestions, to best meet your needs. We have strived to ensure that Health Evidence^TM delivers high-quality needed products to the public health community in Canada, and I look forward to hearing your feedback on our latest updates.

Our look has changed, still our commitment to helping public health use best evidence in practice remains.

Sincerely, 
Maureen Dobbins, Scientific Director, Health Evidence

Check out the new site www.healthevidence.org! Contact us with questions or feedback, we would love to hear from you: info@healthevidence.org.

The 15th Annual Meeting of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network will be held in Quito, Ecuador 13-15 June. The Meeting, organized by the Ecuadorian Collaborative Centre of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network, will be held at the Universidad Tecnológica Equinoccial and will also include a pre-symposium conference will be held on 11 and 12 June. For complete information, please visit the event website.

Final call: submissions due Friday 20 May 23:59 BST

Cochrane’s Board of Trustees agreed to the setup of a Scientific Committee for the purpose of providing independent authoritative guidance for the methods Cochrane should use in its reviews.

A selection panel will identify the first committee members. We seek representation from Co-ordinating Editors (one member of the Executive and one wider Board member), Methods Convenors (one member of the Executive and one wider Board member), also one representative from the other Cochrane groups: Fields, Centres and Consumers, and one representative of the ME and Information Specialist community on this panel. The full panel will comprise: David Tovey (Editor in Chief), current Cochrane Board representative Holger Schünemann and an independent representative, along with the 6 internal group members.

This is a time limited panel to agree a call for Scientific Committee nominations and to consider actively approaching specific individuals outside Cochrane (by invitation) to produce a balanced and well-functioning committee.

Deadline for nominations to the panel: 20th May. The Co-Eds and Methods Executive should each nominate one member, and the other Executives are also invited to nominate an individual for consideration. For the representatives of the Methods and Co-Eds Board, individuals are invited to nominate themselves or colleagues (with prior consent). For each application, candidates should provide a short summary (less than 500 words) of their relevant expertise and experience to assist them in making the independent and impartial judgements required, along with basic information on languages spoken and geographical location. 

David Tovey and Holger Schünemann will make the final selections from the individuals who put themselves forward, bearing in mind the need for broad expertise, and also geographical, linguistic and gender diversity. 

Please submit your nominations to Jackie Chandler jchandler@cochrane.org by the deadline *Friday 20^th May 23:59 BST*

The British Council's Newton Fund is inviting proposals for Researcher Links Travel Grants for travel between the UK and Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, or Turkey.

Researcher Links Travel Grants provide financial support for early-career researchers to undertake an international research placement to strengthen links for future collaboration, build research capacity in developing economies, and enhance the researcher's career opportunities.

Researchers that reside in the UK can apply for funding to visit a university or research institution in Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, or Turkey.  Those residing in Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, or Turkey can apply for funding to come to the UK. 

All Newton Researcher Links Travel Grants have the following three overarching objectives:

• Support international development-relevant research – Travel Grants are intended to support research areas relevant to the economic development and social welfare of partner countries.
• Contribute to capacity building of early career researchers – The proposal should include a description of the capacity building potential of the project (both for the individual applicant, and other potential beneficiaries), and the longer term impact that the project could achieve.
• Establish new research links or develop existing links – Travel Grants are intended to either support new links, or to develop existing links with the potential for longer term sustainability. Applications to return to the research group where the applicant carried out their PhD research or have previously taught will only be considered if they clearly demonstrate the latter.

For additional detail on the call and to apply, please see http://www.britishcouncil.org/education/science/researcher-links

Deadline for receipt of applications: 27 June 2016

Cochrane Crowd has launched!

crowd.cochrane.org

This beta platform will enable anyone to get involved with Cochrane and help identify the evidence we need to make informed healthcare decisions.

The platform, delivered as part of Cochrane’s Project Transform, builds on the hugely successful Embase project where a community of over 2,000 people helped identify well over 20,000 reports of randomized trials for Cochrane’s Central Register of Controlled Trials.

Cochrane crowd offers this same task but with some significant enhancements:

And the fun is only just beginning. Over the next few weeks and months, Cochrane Crowd will roll out more tasks aimed at classifying and describing the evidence.

Go on, take a look: crowd.cochrane.org and see if you can you find an RCT today!

Finally, if you took part in the Embase project, you can use those log-in details and pick up where you left off.

Anna Noel-Storr

On behalf of Cochrane Crowd and Project Transform

crowd@cochrane.org

Support for Project Transform was provided by Cochrane and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (APP1114605). The contents of the published material are solely the responsibility of the Administering Institution, a Participating Institution or individual authors and do not reflect the views of the NHMRC.

A large meta-analysis of 47 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) totaling 275,078 patients found that, on average, treatment effect estimates for subjective outcome events assessed by onsite assessors and those assessed by adjudication committees were similar.

The new article in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews is co-authored by Lee Aymar Ndounga Diakou, Ludovic Trinquart, Asbjørn Hróbjartsson, Caroline Barnes, Amelie Yavchitz, Philippe Ravaud, and Isabelle Boutron, from Cochrane France and INSERM U1153 (Paris, France).

Many clinical trials assess the benefit of new treatments on non-fatal events. Such outcomes frequently lack standard definitions and are subjective in their determination. Central adjudication is the process of reviewing clinical data by a group of independent physicians to assess consistently and to validate events.

It is widely recommended that multicentre RCTs should have a central adjudication committee, rather than relying on the outcomes reported by assessors at the relevant site, where the decision might be subjective. These central adjudication committees are commonly used, especially in large-scale trials. However, the adjudication process can be very time- and resource-consuming. There is very limited evidence to support the use of adjudication committees.

This meta-analysis examined RCTs across medical areas to evaluate the impact of central adjudication on the estimates for treatment effect that they produced. All selected trials reported the same subjective clinical event outcome, assessed by both an onsite assessor and an adjudication committee. The authors investigated whether using the event data from the adjudication committee produced different treatment effect estimates than the data from onsite investigators.

The researchers combined the findings of 47 RCTs  and found no evidence of difference, on average, in treatment effect estimates from onsite assessors and adjudication committees (combined ratio of odds ratios: 1.00, 95% confidence interval 0.97 to 1.04).

When the researchers divided the data into whether or not the onsite assessors knew the patient's allocated treatment in the RCT and the various ways of submitting data to adjudication committees, they found that there might be important differences between onsite assessment and adjudication committee, depending on which methods are used. The combined ratio of odds ratio was 1.00 (95%CI 0.96 to 1.04) when onsite assessors were blinded; 0.76 (95% CI 0.48 to 1.12) when the adjudication committee assessed events identified independently from unblinded onsite assessors; and 1.11 (95% CI 0.96 to 1.27) when the adjudication committee assessed events identified by unblinded onsite assessors. There was a statistically significant interaction between these subgroups (P = 0.03). The authors conclude that their findings question the benefit of having an adjudication committee for a randomized trial and highlight the need to revise the planning and functioning of adjudication committees.

Ndounga Diakou LA, Trinquart L, Hróbjartsson A, Barnes C, Yavchitz A, Ravaud P, Boutron I. Comparison of central adjudication of outcomes and onsite outcome assessment on treatment effect estimates. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2016, Issue 3. Art. No.: MR000043. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.MR000043.pub2

If you have signed into Covidence this week (which we hope many of you have done!), you may have noticed a notification informing users about the introduction of subscription charges for the use of Covidence. We are happy to confirm that all Cochrane Reviews will always be free in Covidence, thanks to Cochrane’s partnership as co-owners of the Covidence tool. In addition, all non-Cochrane reviews already begun in Covidence will remain free. The subscription charges being introduced will not affect your use of Covidence to produce your Cochrane Reviews.

Why are charges being introduced?

Covidence is a non-profit product, developed with the primary goal of improving the public good. In pursuit of this goal the Covidence team has raised funds from grants and through partnerships with other non-profits, particularly Cochrane. However, with the very rapid growth in users over the last six months comes higher costs. In order to continue to support Covidence users and keep improving Covidence a sustainable, long-term income stream is needed.

How do I use Covidence for free for my Cochrane work?

Cochrane will always provide Covidence free of charge for Cochrane Reviews. To ensure that Covidence recognises your reviews as Cochrane reviews, it will be important to make sure that you use your Archie login to access your Covidence account. You should also ensure that when you start a new review project, you select the review title from the available titles Covidence can access in Archie.

Further questions

If you have further questions please contact Covidence support.
 
The Cochrane-Covidence partnership is managed by a project board consisting of David Tovey, Charlotte Pestridge, Chris Mavergames, Miranda Cumpston, Julian Elliott, and Chris Champion. If you have specific questions for the project board please contact Chris Champion.

Further details are available in the Covidence knowledge base.

Everyone will be able to contribute to Cochrane in exciting new ways! Membership pathways will link newcomer’s skills and interests to activities throughout the organization. Clear access points will enhance user experience and reduce waiting times to get involved. Learn about the work being done around Cochrane Membership and what's next.

Membership is a progression based on participation: Interested supporters become active contributors who become Cochrane members.

What is happening in Phase One?

The membership process will create a better experience for newcomers without adding to Group staff workloads. We will create a membership location containing richer data profiles including skills, interests and reports on participation in all groups and activities throughout Cochrane.

Managing all of our data on people in a more detailed central database will allow Cochrane to make better use of its community of willing volunteers who wish be involved. The contributions of all Cochrane supporters will be recorded, whether that is as an author, translator, Crowd participant, Task Exchange contributor or a learner. Groups will be able to assess more reliably the ability and experience of someone who wants to contribute to the Group.

The system will be able to recommend activities to new members to help them build up their skills and experience and make it easier for people to help with the work of Cochrane without burdening Groups.

What’s in it for me?

Membership recognises the valuable contribution of our existing collaborators, so this system will be designed to work for you.

• Central support: We will provide training and support to help Groups get the most out of this new system.
• Better reporting: Groups will have a better overall sense of the Cochrane activity in their country or topic area.
• Detailed User Profiles: Contribution records and individual credentials will make it easier for you to find people to help you do your work.
• Targeted dissemination: An email system will direct information about the work of your Group to the right people.
• Data protection: The new system will handle all data protection issues and keep contact lists up-to-date to save you time.
• Reduced workload: Contacts will be screened to reduce Groups need to redirect email requests.

What will change?

To benefit from the system, Groups will need to contribute any databases of people to the master database and use that resource instead.

The 'Get Involved' links on all websites will link to one page/form which will be centrally managed on the Cochrane.org site.

Anyone seeking to get involved in the future will sign up using one central form to explore all the options available. We will offer choices on how to contribute to the work of Cochrane and save each Group the trouble of doing this each time a new individual makes contact. You will still be able to build personal relationships with contributors where you have need and capacity to do so.

What can Groups do to help?

Overall, we want to build a better understanding of the ways in which people contribute to Cochrane and ensure that we open up Cochrane more fully to everyone. We have been discussing this project with the Executives of Cochrane Groups and have asked them to nominate a main point of contact to provide feedback. These individuals will be updated on progress and will be able to report back to the Group. Please contact your Executive to provide input on for your Group. 

For more information about the development of the membership program, please visit our Membership project pages on the Community Website.

Cochrane Training presents the next in their Cochrane Learning Live webinar series: Using GRADE and the GRADEpro GDT online software in your Cochrane Review on May 10th, 12:00 UTC.

This webinar will be an introduction to how to use GRADE to interpret and assess the certainty / quality of the evidence in a systematic review and how to present the evidence in a Summary of Findings Table. Topics being covered include assessing evidence of outcomes that could be pooled or not pooled, absolute effects and authoring conclusions.

Part of the Cochrane Learning Live webinar series, this session will be presented by Dr Nancy Santesso from the Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics at McMaster Univeirsty.  Dr Santesso is a member of the GRADE Working Group.

The presentation will be of particular interest to anyone who has previously or is currently conducted conducting a systematic review; as well as anyone part of a Cochrane Review Group and / or support review authors.   The webinar will be in a Q&A format with opportunities for participants to ask questions throughout the presentation.  It will also include a demonstration of the GRADEpro GDT software.

Using GRADE and the GRADEpro GDT online software in your Cochrane Review

May 10th, 12:00 UTC

Learn more about this free webinar and sign-up here.

Please find below some further information relating to the recent Cochrane Steering Group (CSG) decisions on the Cochrane-wide Structure and Function Review prepared by the Central Executive Team, and now made freely available.

Cochrane’s existing Group structure (Cochrane Review Groups (CRGs), Centres & Branches, Fields & Networks, and Methods Groups) and ways of working have served the organization well in its first two decades; but the CSG has decided that Cochrane needs to embark on structural change to meet the challenges of the future and to deliver the goals and objectives of our Strategy to 2020. Our vision is to refine our review production systems so that they are able to produce high quality, relevant reviews more rapidly and efficiently; and to create an environment and a more integrated, flexible organizational structure that provides maximum support and opportunities for our most precious resource – our contributors. The CSG has endorsed the three proposals for structural and functional change set out in the paper: 

• the introduction of new approaches to editorial processing, including elements of centralization and separation of editorial and developmental roles;
• the consolidation of Cochrane Groups into geographic and topic-based networks; and 
• The introduction of greater flexibility in the way Groups work by allowing a choice of workstreams that they can undertake.

However, we recognize that there remains considerable work to be done to establish the exact blueprint and the best ways that we will achieve these changes. A detailed paper, including recommendations on the precise approaches to be taken and an estimation of the resource requirements for the changes, will be presented to CSG in Seoul in October. To do that, members of the Central Executive Team will work with collaborators from across Cochrane to refine, evaluate, and improve the proposals. The consultations will start in a few weeks, and will include multiple webinars and other opportunities aimed to ensure an inclusive process, particularly in relation to geographic and linguistic diversity. We also intend to consult with selected external stakeholders, including funding organizations. 

There are a number of key principles that are important to how we will deliver this vision:

• This needs to be a Cochrane-wide discussion. Change needs to be implemented across Cochrane, not just in CRGs. For some of you, such as those working in Centres, Branches, and in the Consumer Network, the changes will align with those already being planned and made in the Group Structure & Function Reviews.
• These structure and function changes need to integrate seamlessly with the other changes and projects we are implementing as part of our Strategy to 2020 activities.
• Bringing Cochrane Groups together provides opportunities for increasing the Groups' combined independence and interdependence and their capacity to identify their own solutions.
• There are many examples of excellence across Cochrane. These changes are about sharing best practice, using the resources we have as effectively as possible, and working more effectively together.
• Cochrane needs to attract and retain motivated and skilled researchers, by providing career and professional development opportunities, if it is to build a sustainable future.

We need and encourage you to contribute your thoughts and ideas to the development of these vitally important plans. You can make any comments, and ask any questions, by emailing strategy@cochrane.org and we will respond as soon as possible.

There is clearly a great deal of work ahead; but we hope that you are as excited as we are by the new opportunities and increased potential for Cochrane to achieve its mission that these changes will create. We hope that you will be prepared to work together with us and colleagues across the collaboration to achieve our shared ambitions.

 Best wishes,

Lisa Bero and Cindy Farquhar, Co-Chairs, Cochrane Steering Group

Mark Wilson, CEO, Cochrane

David Tovey, Editor in Chief, Cochrane Library / Deputy CEO, Cochrane

25 April 2016

Read the full paper: Review of the Structure and Function of Cochrane Groups