HSLS Update

The Cochrane Library: Evidence for Healthcare Decision Making

The Cochrane Library is a collection of databases that offer high-quality evidence to support healthcare decision-making. This is a crucial resource to identify current best evidence.

The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, also known as Cochrane Reviews, produced by the Cochrane Collaboration <www.cochrane.org>, offers the highest level of evidence. Each Cochrane review identifies an intervention for a specific disease or other healthcare problem and determines whether this intervention is effective. Cochrane review author(s) locate, appraise and synthesize evidence from the relevant scientific studies, summarize conclusions on effectiveness, and provide a collation of the known evidence on the topic. Cochrane Reviews offer an easy method to examine the primary studies of a given intervention.  Every Cochrane review adheres to a strict design, thus minimizing the chance of bias and ensuring reliability.

Other databases in the Cochrane Library collection include additional systematic reviews, technology assessments, economic evaluations, clinical trials, and methods literature, as listed below:

•    DARE (Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects) complements Cochrane Reviews by summarizing reviews not produced by the Cochrane Collaboration. Each abstract includes a summary of the review with critical commentary on its overall quality.

•    CONTROL (Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials ‘Clinical Trials’) includes details of articles on clinical trials, mostly from MEDLINE and EMBASE, and other published and unpublished sources.

•    HTA (Health Technology Assessment Database ‘Technology Assessments’) provides access to international studies of completed and ongoing health technology assessments to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of health care. These studies focus on medical, social, ethical and economic implications of healthcare interventions.

•    NHS EED (The NHS Economic Evaluation Database ‘Economic Evaluations’) assists decision-makers by systematically identifying international economic evaluations by appraising their quality and highlighting their relative strengths and weaknesses. HHS EED contains over 5000 abstracts of quality-assessed economic evaluations.

•    Cochrane Database of Methodology Reviews (Methods Reviews) includes the full-text of systematic reviews of empirical methodological studies prepared by the Cochrane Collaboration.

•    The Cochrane Methodology Register (Method Studies) is a bibliography of publications that report on methods used when conducting controlled trials. It includes journals articles, books and conference proceedings.

The Cochrane Library is offered through Wiley InterScience with a single search environment.  To access it, type “Cochrane Library” in the search.HSLS quick search box on the HSLS Web site <www.hsls.pitt.edu>. Some of the Cochrane databases are also available through the OVID search interface and can be accessed by choosing OVID from the “Most Popular” list on the HSLS home page.

--Charlie Wessel