The Cochrane collaboration has issued a press release calling for free access to all data from all clinical trials in order to provide the best care for patients globally. The release can be read here. In an excerpt from the release Peter C Gøtzsche, Director of the Nordic Cochrane Centre states; ““The over-riding objective of healthcare research is to improve patient care and health policy. It is pretty clear that if commercial concerns lead to the withholding of data that are important for rational decision-making by doctors and patients, there is something fundamentally wrong. Selective reporting also violates the Declaration of Helsinki and the implicit contract with the trial participants,”
The Collaboration will present this statement to its members at its 19th Cochrane Colloquium, in Madrid, Spain at its Annual General Meeting on 20 October 2011.
If you’re involved in medicine, you will most likely be aware of the Cochrane collaboration, established in 1993, which is an international network of more than 28,000 dedicated people from over 100 countries. Contributors work together to help health care providers, policy-makers, patients, their advocates and carers, make well-informed decisions about health care, based on the best available research evidence. According to its own website; “The Cochrane Collaboration is committed globally to providing the most reliable evidence of the benefits and harms of healthcare interventions. It publishes systematic reviews in The Cochrane Library and updates these regularly.”
The Cochrane collaboration is funded principally from the proceeds of The Cochrane Library and other Cochrane products, with its groups also supported by national governments, international governmental and non-governmental organisations, universities, hospitals, private foundations, and personal donations. As such it receives no funding from commercial or conflicted sources.
Archie Cochrane was a British medical researcher specialising in epidemiology and publishing widely, including his 1972 book; “Effectiveness and Efficiency – Random Reflections on Health Services.” Archie Cochrane died in 1988, five years before the establishment of the organisation that now bears his name.
Source: www.cochrane.org
