“Our vision is that healthcare decision-making throughout the world will be informed by high quality, timely research evidence".
Founded in 1993, The Cochrane Collaboration is a global network of scientists, researchers, health policy-makers and consumer advocates involved in the production of systematic reviews of healthcare evidence to answer questions about health care. Recently, we have undergone an exciting change, and we now call ourselves simply Cochrane and you can access our new-look website here.
Some 37,000 individuals in more than 130 countries willingly contribute their time and expertise to a rigorous process of gathering, assessing, and synthesising research on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions to produce Cochrane Reviews. The results are then shared with practitioners, policy-makers, and patients to help them make informed and effective choices.
Cochrane Reviews are widely considered the gold standard in systematic reviews of health evidence. They are published online in The Cochrane Library in English (there are more than 5200 reviews published as of December 2014) with a growing selection available in other languages.
Cochrane Reviews are unique because they are produced by, and are relevant to, everyone interested in the effects of health care. The best available evidence allows healthcare policy-makers to decide if they should fund provision of a particular drug. Practitioners can find out whether an intervention is effective in a specific clinical context. Patients and other healthcare consumers can assess the potential risks and benefits of treatment.
Cochrane is a global independent network of health practitioners, researchers, patient advocates and others, and many are world leaders in their fields of medicine, health policy, research methodology, or consumer advocacy. Cochrane groups are situated in some of the world’s best academic and medical institutions.
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 methodology for preparing reviews; and translating reviews from English into a range of different languages. We are an independent, not-for-profit organisation, funded by a variety of sources including governments, universities, hospital trusts, charities, and personal donations. We operate to minimise bias and remain free from commercial influences.
Cochrane has been in official relations with the World Health Organization (WHO) since 2011. This relationship gives us the opportunity to provide input on the way research evidence is identified, synthesised, assessed, and used by the WHO.
The Austrian Cochrane Branch was opened December 2010. It is hosted by the Department for Evidence-based Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at the Danube University Krems.
To provide the basis for evidence-based decisions in the Austrian health system.
To support Austrian researchers and practitioners by enabling them to create evidence-based and independent medical information in the form of Cochrane Reviews that are available to the Austrian healthcare sector and the public.
To promote the awareness of Cochrane and its work to the public, aiming to transfer research findings into health care and thereby improve patient information.
To organise workshops for future, potential authors of Cochrane Reviews.
To be the first point of contact for people interested in Cochrane and evidence-based health care in Austria.
To represent Austria and the needs of Austrians within Cochrane.
Cochrane Austria is funded by a grant from the Lower Austrian Health and Social Fund (NÖGUS) and supported by the Danube University Krems.