Background: Healthcare professionals need point-of-care access to reliable and high-quality synthesized information from up-to-date research. Cochrane Reviews provide a valuable source of information, but can take a long time to read and have a large volume of data, much of which may not be relevant to the busy clinician. Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs) provide an accessible, clinically-focused summary of Cochrane Reviews to make them usable for this important audience.

Objectives: To describe how the presentation of data in CCAs aids information dissemination.

Methods:The CCA website was developed to mimic the way clinicians approach information gathering, bringing to the forefront the data that are most important to making a decision on the potential treatment benefits and harms of treatments. Since the CCA website was launched in 2013, we have evolved the data presentation in response to feedback from users, honing the data presented to respond best to their needs.

Results: Each CCA addresses a question and provides a concise, outcome-focused synthesis of the results of a Cochrane Review, with an overarching take-home message. Full outcome data supporting the answer are a click away. The population, intervention, comparator and outcome (PICO) information, a narrative result, the quality of evidence or risk of bias summary, a link to the forest plot and absolute values are also provided to allow quick understanding and application of results. New developments involve using the CCA format for presenting results from overviews and network meta-analyses, as clinicians would benefit from reliable and accurate clinician-friendly summaries of these complex Cochrane Reviews.

Conclusions: CCAs are a great tool to filter the vast amount of data from Cochrane Reviews and make it easier for healthcare professionals to apply high-quality evidence when managing patients.