Our vision is that healthcare decision-making throughout the world will be informed by high quality, timely research evidence.

Founded in 1993, Cochrane is the largest global network of scientists, researchers, health policy makers, and consumer advocates dedicated to the production of systematic reviews of healthcare evidence. We are an independent, not-for-profit organization, funded by a variety of sources including governments, universities, hospital trusts, charities, and personal donations. We operate to minimize bias and remain free from commercial influences.

Some 37,000 individuals in more than 130 countries willingly contribute their time and expertise to a rigorous process of gathering, assessing, and synthesizing research on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions in order to produce Cochrane Reviews. The results are then shared with practitioners, policy makers, research funders, and patients to help them make informed choices.

Cochrane Reviews are widely considered the gold standard in systematic reviews of health evidence. They are published online in the Cochrane Library in English with a growing selection available in other languages. There are currently more than 6,700 Cochrane Reviews available in the Library.

Cochrane’s contributors are a mix of mostly volunteers and some paid staff; many are world leaders in their field of medicine, health policy, research methodology, or consumer advocacy. Cochrane groups are situated in some of the world’s most prestigious academic and medical institutions.

In addition to our core mission of producing Cochrane Reviews, our contributors are involved in a number of related activities, including: advocating for evidence-based decision-making; training in the conduct of Cochrane Reviews; developing methods for preparing reviews and other evidence syntheses; and translating reviews from English into many different languages. 

In 2011, Cochrane was accepted as a non-governmental organization in official relations with the World Health Organization (WHO), establishing a partnership with formalized communication between the organizations, and granting Cochrane a seat on the World Health Assembly, allowing us to provide input to WHO health resolutions.

Read more about Cochrane here.