PubMed Health is a US National of Library of Medicine (NLM) resource to make systematic reviews of clinical effectiveness easier to find and use. Visit it at pubmed.gov/health and follow developments on Twitter @PubMedHealth or Google+.

A comprehensive collection of systematic reviews and their knowledge translation versions in one place: that’s the basic premise of PubMed Health. The website integrates DARE (Database of Reviews of Effects), Cochrane Reviews and systematic reviews published directly by health technology assessment agencies.

read more

The South Asian Cochrane Network and Centre, which I joined two weeks back, kicked off its training workshops for the year 2012 with one on ‘Understanding and Using Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses in Informing Health Decisions’.

That’s quite a few unpalatable words for a laywoman and under previous circumstances, this would have been one workshop that I would have avoided, especially if I knew it had anything to do with medicine. I’m married to a doc and I live in a medical community. So I get more than my fair share of ‘medicated talk.’

read more

I am Mingming from the Chinese Cochrane Centre. I have been involved in the Collaboration since 1998 and joined CCNet in1999. My roles in the Collaboration are varied including Cochrane author, consumer, centre coordinator and translator etc. My vision for the Cochrane Consumer Network is:

1) to promote wider participation in The Collaboration across the countries, particularly from non-English speaking countries;

2) to help more consumers get involved with different review groups;

read more

I joined the CCNet in 1998 primarily to learn how Cochrane Systematic Reviews can be better used to support consumers in health care decision making, particularly in resource-constrained communities. Joining CCNet provided the tool I needed (in form of high quality health information) to further address consumer concerns in Africa and beyond. It has been a unique learning experience for me using the Synopses, now Plain Language Summaries to communicate Cochrane evidence to low literate communities using culturally appropriate strategies.

read more

I met The Cochrane Collaboration the first time, at an international conference regarding breast cancer, in the late 90’s in Europe. There, I read a brochure, published by CCNet, and fell in love with the idea.  At that time, I was a very young woman diagnosed with breast cancer (grade 3) and a mother of three little children, with one very ill daughter, so I was “thirsty” for any certified, objective written medical information regarding my family’s diseases.

read more

Thanks to a consumer stipend, I had the good fortune to attend my first Colloquium in 2001 in Lyons, France.  There was so much new information to absorb, not the least of which was how the Collaboration worked and how to understand Cochranespeak.  I happened into an ongoing workshop in time to hear something shocking and entirely new to me.  The speaker was reporting his review of drug trials and how common it is for the serious adverse events (SAE) data to be withheld. 

read more

How do patients get involved in medical research? First of all, in my own case, to try to set the record straight where they think it is faulty. When I was prescribed tamoxifen for breast cancer in 1987 no oestrogen receptor test was done: tamoxifen was given to everyone regardless. The main side effect that gave me grief was the loss of my singing voice, which went croaky and dropped an octave.

read more

I joined The Cochrane Collaboration in 1997, when the Pregnancy and Childbirth Group (PCG) invited me to help them involve consumers in their work. At the time, I was an antenatal teacher with the UK National Childbirth Trust (NCT) and I was on the NCT Research and Information Group because I had a scientific background. I was interested in PCG because Iain Chalmers had made a distinct impression on me when he spoke at an NCT conference a few years earlier.

read more