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Cochrane in 2017: Opportunities for the research community in China

Archibald (Archie) Leman Cochrane (1909 to 1988), a British epidemiologist and medical doctor, served as a prisoner of war (POW) chief medical officer during World War II.1 While caring for other POWs with advanced tuberculosis in Elsterhorst, Germany, it occurred to him that there was uncertainty as to which intervention and when it should be delivered. Archie Cochrane documented his POW experiences in his book, the world-renowned bestseller Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services, published in 1972, writing: “I had never heard of “randomized controlled trials,” but I knew that there was no real evidence that anything we had to offer had any effect on tuberculosis.”2 He went on to emphasize the importance to summarize data from relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in 1979 with this famous quote3: “It is surely a great criticism of our profession that we have not organised a critical summary by speciality or sub-speciality, up-dated periodically, of all relevant RCTs.” Iain Chalmers, an obstetrician based in the UK, was inspired by Archie Cochrane's thought-provoking concept and responded by initiating a register of controlled trials in the field of perinatal medicine (The Oxford Database of Perinatal Trials) and systematically reviewing their results. The resulting systematic reviews of RCTs investigating the effects of interventions in pregnancy and childbirth were collected in a two-volume, 1500-page book entitled Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth, released in 1989.4,5 Chalmers's efforts coincided with the announcement of a national strategy to support a research and development programme and infrastructure for the National Health Service and funds were provided to set up a Centre named after Cochrane himself to facilitate the systematic methods to collate and summarize evidence from RCTs.6,7 In October 1992, the first ‘Cochrane Centre’ was founded in Oxford, UK, with a mission to work with interested individuals (eg, study investigators and editors) and organizations (eg, professional societies and funding bodies) from the UK and globally in turning Archie Cochrane's wishes into reality.8,9 Expressions of interest and support came from people around the world and, in October 1993, an international group of 77 people including Chalmers co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration (which has recently been renamed as ‘Cochrane’) and held the first ever Cochrane Colloquium in Oxford, UK.8–10 Over the course of nearly 25 years, Cochrane has transformed into a global, independent, and vibrant network, with over 37,000 contributors from more than 130 countries in the present day, and the numbers continue to grow. Cochrane has formal partnerships with global organizations including AllTrials, the Campbell Collaboration, the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N), Wikipedia, and the World Health