About us

The Cochrane Collaboration, established in 1993, is an international network of people helping healthcare providers, policy makers, patients, their advocates and carers, make well-informed decisions about human health care by preparing, updating and promoting the accessibility of Cochrane Reviews – over 4,000 so far, published online in The Cochrane Library.

We believe in equal partnerships

The Collaboration believes that effective health care is created through equal partnerships between provider, practitioner and patient.

Cochrane Reviews are unique because they are both produced by, and are relevant to, everyone interested in the effects of health care. Based on the best available evidence, healthcare providers can decide if they should fund production of a particular drug. Practitioners can find out if an intervention is effective in a specific clinical context. Patients and other healthcare consumers can assess the potential risks and benefits of their treatment.

“The Cochrane Collaboration has a special interest in involving people from all walks of life to participate in its activities and provides considerable support to enable this. This heady mix of social relevance, good science, altruism and global partnership makes The Cochrane Collaboration one of the most valuable and exciting enterprises in the world today.”

- Prathap Tharyan, Director of the South Asian Cochrane Centre and Network, Vellore, India

We have no geographical boundaries

The Cochrane Collaboration’s contributors are a mix of volunteers and paid staff who are affiliated to the organisation through Cochrane entities: healthcare subject-related review groups, thematic networks, groups concerned with the methodology of systematic reviews, and regional centres. Many are world leaders in their field of medicine, health policy, research methodology or consumer advocacy, and our entities are situated in some of the world’s best academic and medical institutions.

“Being part of The Cochrane Collaboration is more than a publication or a job. It's a network of colleagues, advisors and friends that spans the globe - an incomparable opportunity to learn, collaborate and share with some amazing people.”

- Miranda Cumpston, Research Officer at the Australasian Cochrane Centre, Victoria, Australia

There is no one place or office that is ‘The Cochrane Collaboration’. Our contributors and entities are based all around the world and the majority of our work is carried out online. Each entity is a ‘mini-organisation’ in itself, with its own funding, website and workload. Contributors affiliate themselves to an entity, or in some cases several entities, based on their interests, expertise and/or geographical location.

To tie the Collaboration together, we have a number of overarching structures, led by the Steering Group, which provides policy and strategic leadership for the organisation. Members of this group are democratically elected from, and by, our contributors. We also have a Secretariat, based in Oxford, UK, which supports the work of the Steering Group and the Collaboration’s entities, led by the Chief Executive Officer of the Collaboration; and an Editorial Unit, based in London, UK, which supports Cochrane Review production, led by the Editor in Chief of The Cochrane Library.

"Systematically reviewing the effectiveness of healthcare interventions is such an obvious thing to do, but it took a bunch of amazing people to make it happen. Those amazing people are the people of The Cochrane Collaboration, and I am privileged to work for them."

- Nick Royle, Chief Executive Officer of The Cochrane Collaboration

We hold annual conferences, known as ‘Colloquia’, which are open to everyone. Colloquia are designed to bring people together in one place to discuss, develop and promote our work, and to shape the organisation’s future direction.

In addition to our core mission of producing Cochrane Reviews, our contributors are involved in a number of related activities, including advocacy for evidence-based decision-making, providing training in Cochrane Review preparation, developing the methodology for preparing  reviews, and translating them from English into a variety of different languages.

Find out more about the Collaboration’s structure and management here.

“The Cochrane Collaboration is a place for you to look for healthcare information, share ideas, contribute time, and find friends. Wherever you are from, whatever language you speak, The Cochrane Collaboration welcomes your participation!”

- Maoling Wei, Review author, and member of the Consumer Network, Chengdu, China

We are independent

The Cochrane Collaboration is named after Archie Cochrane (1909-1988), a British epidemiologist, who advocated the use of randomised controlled trials as a means of reliably informing healthcare practice. We are an independent, not-for-profit organisation, funded by a variety of sources including governments, universities, hospital trusts, charities and personal donations. However, we do not accept commercial or conflicted funding – this is vital for us to generate authoritative and reliable information, produced by people who can work freely, unconstrained by commercial and financial interests.

Find out more about the Collaboration’s funding here.