Background: There is increasing demand for structured high-quality evidence partially satisfied by the production and maintenance of Cochrane Reviews. To assess the feasibility of combining individual reviews, we independently piloted an approach to producing overviews of interventions for prevention and treatment of the common cold, depot medication for schizophrenia and interventions for smoking cessation.

Methods: The overviews were based on parts of the current topic lists of relevant CRGs. Interventions for the common cold were tabulated by availability of Cochrane and non-Cochrane reviews. Nine reviews on various long-acting antipsycotics were combined using ReMan 4.1beta with Metaview 4 beta software (see abstracts numbers 2, 34, 65, 77). Single reviews of interventions for smoking cessation were combined in a narrative overview.

Results: Although working independently on different topics, we believe that the methods used focus on different stages of the same process (tabulation of interventions, combing of results and narrative overview).

Conclusions: We recommend that consideration be given to the resourcing of a formal trial to enable CRGs in collaboration with other entities to further explore the possibility of producing overviews.