Cochrane, previously known as the Cochrane Collaboration, is an independent, nonprofit, nongovernmental organization consisting of a group of more than 37,000 volunteers in more than 130 countries.
The group was formed to organize medical research information in a systematic way, according to the principles of evidence-based medicine, to facilitate the choices that health professionals, patients, policy makers, and others face in health interventions.
It conducts systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health-care interventions and diagnostic tests, which it publishes in The Cochrane Library. A few reviews (in fields such as occupational health) have also studied the results of non-randomized, observational studies.
It was established in 1993, and named after the British epidemiologist, Archie Cochrane (1909-1988). The organisation benefits from thousands of contributors worldwide, working collaboratively from within many independent groups of people.
