Кокрановское сотрудничество для того, чтобы сделать свои обзоры более удобными для врачей, создало сайт Cochrane Clinical Answers
What are CCAs?
Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs) http://cochraneclinicalanswers.com/ provide a readable, digestible, clinically focused entry point to rigorous research from Cochrane systematic reviews. They are designed to be actionable and to inform decision making at the point of care. Each Cochrane Clinical Answer contains a clinical question, a short answer, and an opportunity to ‘drill down’ to the evidence from the relevant Cochrane review.
The CCA team:
Editor in Chief: David Tovey; Editor, Cochrane Clinical Answers: Karen Pettersen; Clinical Editors: Sera Tort, Jane Burch
The process for creating CCAs:
Selecting which Reviews will be used for CCAs:
We take a range of considerations into account when choosing which Cochrane Reviews to base CCAs on:
- Prevalence and high morbidity of condition including high hospitalization rates, starting with Diabetes and COPD, moving on to acute respiratory infection, musculoskeletal disease, ear, nose, and throat disorders, dementia, chronic pain management and palliative care, with the ongoing aim of creating a reasonable cluster of answers across each disease area we cover, with a focus on internal medicine and both adults and children
Reviews that have been updated within the past 5 years; search date of 2009 at the earliest - Reviews that contain trials so can provide at least some data to give a Clinical Answer. ‘Empty’ reviews are not being included
- Reviews that showcase Cochrane review development initiatives such as Summary of Findings tables
- Most accessed reviews identified by work done by Wiley in relation to the Cochrane Library impact factor calculation
The editorial process:
Data extraction:
The process of developing a CCA begins with data extraction, firstly using the PICOtron, a programme that automatically extracts the data from the Data and Analysis section of the review to ensure we don’t make transfer errors with the numbers. Sera Tort and I then use the review text to extract data on the Population, Intervention, Comparison and quality of the evidence, taking data from all parts of the Cochrane Review as needed, including the Characteristics of included studies table in many cases to find details of the population and drug doses etc. and using Summary of findings (SoF) tables if they are available to provide details of the evidence quality and Risk of bias tables if SoF do not exist.
If any queries about the data arise during this process, we halt the CCA process and contact Managing Editors to get their help in consulting with the review authors before proceeding with creating the CCA.
Once the data extraction is complete, it is published on the CCA website.
Composing the Answer:
The completed data extraction goes to one of our Associate Editors to compose the Clinical Answer. Our Associate Editors are practicing clinicians, either full or part time and have been commissioned to write for us, all completing a draft CCA to ensure that they and we are happy with the work before being contracted to work for us. Some Associate Editors are also Cochrane reviewers but we aim to ensure that Cochrane reviewers do not write Answers based on their own reviews; the aim is to get an independent perspective on the data from some-one who has not been involved in generating it, to mimic the way that Cochrane Reviews would be approached in clinical practice.
The Clinical Answer is then signed off by one of the CCA team, liaising with the Associate Editor as needed to ensure that it reflects the data in the review as well as providing an actionable Answer. The CCA is then re-published in full.
How do I get access?
CCAs are available on subscription to subscribers to the Cochrane Library or to those with access to the Cochrane Library via national provision. We are offering free trials of CCAs; sign up at http://cochraneclinicalanswers.com/subscribe . Please provide your full name and mailing address with your trial request.
Informing authors as Clinical Answers based on their reviews are published:
Up to now, we have not contacted review authors when Clinical Answers based on their reviews are published. However, we have received feedback from Cochrane Co-ordinating Editors that this would be something that authors would value. I attach a list of all the CCAs we have completed in full thus far. Ongoing, as we complete a full CCA (one that contains the Clinical Answer as well as the data extraction), Dr Tort will contact the author listed as the contact person for the review. We welcome your feedback on any aspect of the CCA; please contact Karen (kpettersen@wiley.com) or Sera (stort@cochrane.org). We would be happy to answer any questions you have about the product or the process.
We hope that you will value CCAs as another mechanism to get your work used in clinical practice to improve patient care and look forward to hearing from you!
Karen Pettersen
Editor, Cochrane Clinical Answers
