Engaging healthcare professionals in using Cochrane Reviews within the clinical decision-making pathway: how you can support the Cochrane Clinical Answers initiative

Article type
Authors
Pettersen K1, Tort S2, Burch J3
1Wiley
2Cochrane Editorial Unit
3Cochrane Central Executive Team
Abstract
Objectives:
To provide a forum to discuss good review reporting practices to facilitate creation of Cochrane Clinical Answers.

Description:
Writing a Cochrane Review can be a big challenge; there are many new things to learn, including the software and methodology, and many tasks, including extracting data, performing statistical analyses, and synthesising results. All of this means you can lose perspective on the clinical implications of the data. Cochrane Clinical Answers (http://cochraneclinicalanswers.com/) aims to increase the usage of Cochrane Reviews to inform healthcare decisions. Enhancing clinical usability involves bringing to the forefront the data that allow the results of a review to be individualized to the patient, namely the Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome (PICO). In terms of population, how old were people, did they have co-morbidities? With regard to intervention, what drug dose, frequency, duration? For comparison, was the intervention compared with alternative treatment options available to the patient? For outcome, for example, if weight was reduced, by how much, and how long did it take to lose weight? In addition, how much confidence can we have that the results accurately reflect what will happen in practice? Taking specific examples from Cochrane Reviews as a basis for the discussion, this session aims to develop consensus about good practice and generate ideas for solutions to the challenges.