Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Doctors and patients alike are overwhelmed with the sheer amount of complex scientific health information. They need free and easy access to understandable and unbiased information. In line with Cochrane's Strategy to 2020 aim to make evidence more widely accessible, the Cochrane Centres in Germany, Switzerland and Austria cooperate in providing and disseminating an accessible format of Cochrane evidence via “Wissen Was Wirkt” (Knowing What Works), the German-language Cochrane blog that started in May 2015.
Objectives: To disseminate Cochrane content via a joint blog in three German-speaking countries and to ensure its continuous development.
Methods: We regularly provide blog posts that summarise the results of Cochrane Reviews in an easily understandable and approachable manner. We also contextualise methods of evidence-based medicine using interesting and personal stories. Articles are written by the staff of the three German-speaking Cochrane Centers and by selected external authors. In 2019, a detailed author's guide was established to support the drafting of articles and to facilitate quality assurance. We disseminate our blog posts via the website wissenwaswirkt.org and our social media channels. We use Google Analytics to evaluate user access statistics.
Results: We have so far published 227 articles on "Wissen Was Wirkt", on average almost one article per week. In 2019, more than 160 000 users visited the blog (about 13 300 per month); web pages were accessed more than 578 000 times in total. In 2018, we carried out a user survey. Its results were used for the further development of the blog. We will provide updated user statistics at the time of the presentation.
Conclusions: The blog is an excellent medium for presenting evidence-based information about healthcare, mostly from Cochrane reviews, in a way that is accessible to laypersons and professionals alike. Although it is time consuming to produce high quality content for the blog and coordinate activities between the three Cochrane Centers, “Wissen Was Wirkt” is a good example of how such a cooperation can succeed and how it can be continuously evaluated and improved. So far, we have published mostly text formats. We are now also exploring video and graphic formats to respond to different user preferences.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: The target audience for the blog are consumers. Most articles have been written by Cochrane staff, some by Cochrane Consumers. Other articles feature consumer stories. In 2020, we have – for the first time – asked users to comment on an article before its publication to ensure its readability and relevance.
Objectives: To disseminate Cochrane content via a joint blog in three German-speaking countries and to ensure its continuous development.
Methods: We regularly provide blog posts that summarise the results of Cochrane Reviews in an easily understandable and approachable manner. We also contextualise methods of evidence-based medicine using interesting and personal stories. Articles are written by the staff of the three German-speaking Cochrane Centers and by selected external authors. In 2019, a detailed author's guide was established to support the drafting of articles and to facilitate quality assurance. We disseminate our blog posts via the website wissenwaswirkt.org and our social media channels. We use Google Analytics to evaluate user access statistics.
Results: We have so far published 227 articles on "Wissen Was Wirkt", on average almost one article per week. In 2019, more than 160 000 users visited the blog (about 13 300 per month); web pages were accessed more than 578 000 times in total. In 2018, we carried out a user survey. Its results were used for the further development of the blog. We will provide updated user statistics at the time of the presentation.
Conclusions: The blog is an excellent medium for presenting evidence-based information about healthcare, mostly from Cochrane reviews, in a way that is accessible to laypersons and professionals alike. Although it is time consuming to produce high quality content for the blog and coordinate activities between the three Cochrane Centers, “Wissen Was Wirkt” is a good example of how such a cooperation can succeed and how it can be continuously evaluated and improved. So far, we have published mostly text formats. We are now also exploring video and graphic formats to respond to different user preferences.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: The target audience for the blog are consumers. Most articles have been written by Cochrane staff, some by Cochrane Consumers. Other articles feature consumer stories. In 2020, we have – for the first time – asked users to comment on an article before its publication to ensure its readability and relevance.