The Cochrane Collaboration is an international not-for-profit organisation, providing up-to-date information about the effects of health care. We produce the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, part of The Cochrane Library, the definitive resource for evidence-based health care.

The work of Cochrane Review Groups, Methods Groups, Fields/Networks and the Consumer Network is facilitated in different ways by the work of 14 Cochrane Centres around the world. We - the German Cochrane Centre - are responsible for Germany, Liechtenstein as well as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
Switzerland is represented by the Swiss Branch of the French Cochrane Centre in Lausanne. The Austrian Branch of the German Cochrane Centre (ÖCZ) is responsible for Austria.

A centre's main objectives are:

• To ensure effective and efficient communication between Centre members and members of other entities within the Cochrane Collaboration.
• To serve as a source of information about the Cochrane Collaboration and to support people becoming involved, including authors, handsearchers, consumers and others.
• To provide/facilitate training and support for authors, editors, co-ordinators, handsearchers and other contributors (by organising workshops, seminars and colloquia on methodological and other review-related topics).
• To support CRG editorial bases, Methods Groups and Fields/Networks in the defined geographic or linguistic area.
• To promote accessibility to The Cochrane Library to healthcare professionals, consumers and others.
• To support all aspects of establishing and disseminating reviews to improve translation of medical knowledge into policy and practice
• To co-ordinate activities for handsearching clinical trials in medical journals and supporting review groups in their search for specific literature in the centre’s geographic area
• To co-ordinate the Collaboration’s contributions for establishment of an international registry of completed and ongoing clinical trials.
• To support developing methodologies for establishment und update of systematic reviews.

The Cochrane Collaboration is an independent, international non-profit organisation, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide. It produces and disseminates systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and promotes the search for evidence in the form of clinical trials and other studies of interventions. The Cochrane Collaboration was founded in 1993 and named for the British epidemiologist, Archie Cochrane..

The major product of the Collaboration is the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews which is published monthly as part of The Cochrane Library.

Those who prepare the reviews are mostly health care professionals who volunteer to work in one of the many Collaborative Review Groups, with editorial teams overseeing the preparation and maintenance of the reviews, as well as application of the rigorous quality standards for which Cochrane Reviews have become known.

The activities of the Collaboration are directed by an elected Steering Group and are supported by staff in Cochrane Entities (Centres, Review Groups, Methods Groups, Fields/Networks) around the world.

Learn even more about the structure, organization, and products of The Cochrane Collaboration.