Posted on Nov. 18: Canadian Cochrane Centre celebrates decade of educated healthcare decisions
The Canadian Cochrane Centre is celebrating ten years of helping people in Canada make well-informed decisions about healthcare.
The Canadian Centre first opened in August 1993, less than a year after the first Cochrane Centre opened in the United Kingdom (UK). Then, as now, it was based at McMaster University as part of the Health Information Research Unit of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Faculty of Health Sciences.
The Canadian Centre's parent organization, The Cochrane Collaboration, was formally launched at the first Cochrane Colloquium in Oxford in October 1993, and since that time, The collaboration has grown steadily in size and reputation, both in Canada and around the world.
Through the work of thousands of volunteers in more than 50 countries, the collaboration produces The Cochrane Library, a collection of high quality evidence-based healthcare databases that is regarded as the world's most comprehensive source for evidence-based healthcare information.
During the week of Nov. 17, the Canadian Cochrane Centre will be hosting a number of events to celebrate its tenth anniversary and to promote The Cochrane Collaboration in Canada.
To kick everything off, the Canadian Cochrane Centre will be offering a free public lecture entitled “Knowledge is the enemy of disease” by Muir Gray. Gray is the director of the UK National Electronic Library for Health, at the McMaster University Health Sciences Centre (Rm. 1A1) on Thursday, Nov. 20 at 5 p.m.
In his lecture, Gray will argue that the application of existing healthcare knowledge will have a greater impact on health and disease than any drug or technology likely to be introduced in the next decade. This is contrary to the general assumption that exciting new technologies or breakthrough drugs are best ways of overcoming current and emerging health problems, and promises to pave the way for an interesting discussion.
Following the public lecture, Brian Haynes, chair of the Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster, and founding director of the Canadian Cochrane Centre, will be the discussant and will provide a Canadian and McMaster perspective.
Haynes has a strong interest in improving health care by enhancing the availability and application of healthcare knowledge. His most recent project, McMaster PLUS, is an evidence-based information service for physicians and other health professionals living in remote communities in northern Ontario.
On Friday, the third Canadian Cochrane Symposium on Advancing the Knowledge Translation of Systematic Reviews” will begin. This conference is geared towards those interested in turning healthcare research into healthcare policy and practice.
The Symposium will start at 1 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 21 and will end on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. In addition to plenary sessions by leaders in the area of knowledge translation, the symposium will feature stimulating workshops, roundtable discussions, oral presentations, and poster presentations. There will also be plenty of time for informal discussion.
To find out more about the public lecture, the third Canadian Cochrane Symposium, the Canadian Cochrane Centre or The Cochrane Collaboration, contact Kathie Clark at kclark@mcmaster.ca.
