The Cochrane Library, an online resource published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., US, on behalf of the Cochrane Collaboration, is seen to benefit Australian patients and their healthcare practitioners for better health decisions. The Cochrane Library is stated to feature over 5,000 published systematic reviews of evidence for healthcare interventions, ranging from surgical procedures and drugs to behavioural therapies and preventive care. Cochrane reviews are said to provide independent high-quality evidence to aid in healthcare decision making.
The Australian Government, through the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), has renewed funding for Australia's national licence to the Library. This means every Australian will continue to be able to access reliable information about what works and what does not.
Australians are the highest per capita users of the Library in the world. In 2011, Australians viewed 708,000 Cochrane abstracts online and downloaded 501,642 full reviews. The three most popular reviews in Australia were models of care for childbearing women, preventing falls in older people living in the community, and zinc for the common cold. The most popular review internationally looked at interventions for preventing obesity in children.
According to NHMRC CEO Prof. Warwick Anderson, the Council is committed to a health literate society where all Australians benefit from access to the latest health and medical research. Ongoing support for the Cochrane Library is seen as recognition of the vital role systematic reviews play in informing policy and practice. The renewal of the licence marks the 10th anniversary of the announcement of the original licence at the Cochrane Colloquium held in Melbourne in 2002.
