NICE and Cochrane sign collaborative agreement to deliver ‘living’ guideline recommendations

Caroline Struthers said:
I'm sure they're not *all* unprofessional and conflicted. But there will be no way of telling whether they are or not, and presumably NICE won't be concerned about researcher allegiance any more than Cochrane were with the CFS reviews. Neither Cochrane or NICE look at conflicts in individual studies so I am sure they are not going to start now. I will write and ask how NICE are going to make sure Cochrane reviewers always use GRADE sensibly as they have made different judgements on the evidence quality for GET. There seems little point now in Cochrane continuing with the exercise review as there is no new evidence to feed into NICE's review. So perhaps they will finally withdraw it...
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Yea but we can see what a shambles you get if you don't employ reviewers who aren't sufficiently knowledgeable and/or have a conflict of interest. If you look at the cost of the review (using appropriate reviewers) and the total cost of the service [on a UK basis] then the cost of the reviewers seems insignificant. Plus you loose credibility if you produce studies like the 2007 guidelines for ME/CFS --- it looks as if your not doing the right thing for citizens but rather giving your mates free cash while trashing your most vulnerable citizens.
 
Sharing evidence with NICE is part of a broader approach to help Cochrane to identify priority reviews
Toby Lasserson, deputy editor in chief at Cochrane, writes about a new collaborative agreement with NICE, how it will work and what it means for the health service.

This week, Cochrane and NICE signed a collaborative agreement which creates a formal process for people who are preparing reviews for the Cochrane Library to share their findings with NICE.

Cochrane are no strangers to working with NICE, and over the last few years Cochrane Review Groups have been approached by NICE guideline committees to support the guideline process. This has led to some high priority Cochrane Reviews being used in guidelines for preventing falls and lung disease.

While it can be hard to coordinate timely production of reviews with the guideline development process, sharing the results of Cochrane reviews before their publication has produced more effective ways of working and helps to benefit NICE, people working in the NHS and ultimately people using the health service.

For Cochrane there’s been understandable concern about sharing unpublished reviews because they have not been subject to complete editorial and peer review processes. However, it’s important to remember that most guideline committees are used to drawing on systematic reviews that have not yet been peer reviewed or formally published. There is a lot to be gained from effective dialogue and engagement between guideline developers and review teams as early as possible.

Actively supporting the process of delivering reviews for NICE guidelines in this way means the findings of our reviews can help to develop evidence based recommendations for the NHS.
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https://www.wired-gov.net/wg/news.n...identify+priority+reviews+02092021111500?open
 
For Cochrane there’s been understandable concern about sharing unpublished reviews because they have not been subject to complete editorial and peer review processes
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Oh noes, not Cochrane's complete editorial and peer review processes. The processes where even the editor-in-chief has to begrudgingly acknowledge blatant flaws in a review but simply opt to do nothing? How could we possibly do without those?

What review group would NICE work with in our case? The one filled with charlatans that produced invalid reviews based on a complete misunderstanding of the problem and isn't bothered by it? Or the lack of a review group the... whatever it is the IAG will eventually do one day maybe... is working under?

This is a bit like nuking a hurricane. It may sound badass to some but you all end up with is a radioactive hurricane.
 
Peter Trewhitt said:
A complete irrelevance but did Cochrane ever come up with an appropriate placing of ME/CFS within there group structure? We must has long passed their own deadline.
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No group accepted it, so it's basically on its own. But Cochrane seems to work in a similar way to the NIH, it's all about the working groups. So without a working group, I have no idea how things are supposed to work out but we're apparently supposed to trust that it will work itself out, somehow.
 
rvallee said:
???

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Central Executive Team Review and Re-organization. This week, Cochrane’s Governing Board has unanimously approved the proposed Central Executive Team restructure plans which will help us save money as we face funding challenges, streamline the way we work in line with the Strategy for Change and invest in fundraising to support Cochrane globally. We will now move into implementation, including a consultation with all Central Executive Team. We will be able to share more information on these changes in the coming weeks.
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https://community.cochrane.org/taxonomy/term/1
 
NIHR
ESPAG Public minutes - July 2021
Evidence Synthesis Programme Advisory Group Meeting
Attendees:
Dr Phil Alderson, NICE Representative
Professor Andrew Booth, Academic Advisor
Professor Martin Burton, Cochrane UK
Professor Jo Lord, Academic Advisor
Dr Jo Morrison, Cochrane Review Group Representative
Professor John Powell, Programme Deputy Director
Dr Karla Soares-Weiser, Cochrane Editor in Chief
Professor Ken Stein, Programme Director (Chair)
Dr Ligia Teixeira, Social Care Representative
Mrs Alison Turner, NHS Representative
Mr Malcolm Turner, Public Representative
Dr Vivian Welch, Campbell Collaboration
Professor Olivia Wu, Complex Reviews Support Unit

Observers:
Ms Judith Brodie, Cochrane
Ms Emma Small, Welsh Government

Cochrane Reviews continue to have an impact on guidelines and clinical practice – both nationally and internationally
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https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/espag-public-minutes-july-2021/29116
 
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Funding now clearly a priority

"We are now looking to recruit our first Director of Development, whose role will be to work with the global community to grow our fundraising income substantially in the coming years. As a member of the executive leadership team, they will lead the Development Directorate and establish a fundraising operation that works collaboratively to deliver significant global income growth."

https://www.charityjob.co.uk/jobs/cochrane/director-of-development/792128?tsId=2
 
Sly Saint said:
"We are now looking to recruit our first Director of Development, whose role will be to work with the global community to grow our fundraising income substantially in the coming years. As a member of the executive leadership team, they will lead the Development Directorate and establish a fundraising operation that works collaboratively to deliver significant global income growth."
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It is hard to have faith in an organisation that puts out such a poorly composed job description.

What is 'fundraising income'?

I have given up on Cochrane.
 
Decision makers need constantly updated evidence synthesis

"As the world began to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic last year, there was an explosion of guidelines, position statements and protocols — many of low quality and contradictory. In March 2020, several of us approached the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, worried that the cacophony would create confusion and anxiety among already-stressed clinicians. We argued for key bodies to come together quickly and use robust, evidence-based processes to find signals in the noisy flow of COVID-19 research. Two weeks later, we had formed a task force and produced the first version of national, evidence-based COVID-19 guidelines for Australia. We made a commitment to update the guidelines every week, but this had never been done before. Our challenge was to work out how.

Typically, national guidelines draw on formal summaries of research evidence called systematic reviews, but the pandemic ‘broke the evidence pipeline’1. Take the example of remdesivir, an intravenous treatment originally developed for Ebola virus. In May 2020, weak but promising data suggested it could be used to treat COVID-19. Over the next 18 months, 52 papers from 14 randomized trials were published. Clinicians and policymakers had to make decisions on the basis of this shifting, and often contradictory, body of evidence. To help them, scholars produced systematic reviews — 30 in 2020. Many were out of date before publication because they left out recently published primary studies; most of the rest became out of date within weeks.

.....

This year, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) announced that living guidelines will be a pillar of its improvement strategy over the next five years. After piloting efforts for several years, the WHO this year began promoting living systematic reviews and living guidelines as standard methodology. It has used the approach for COVID-19, maternal and perinatal care and contraception. In the academic literature, about 100 living systematic reviews have been published since the start of 2020, compared with perhaps 15 in the 4 years previously."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03690-1
 
Sly Saint said:
Funding now clearly a priority

"We are now looking to recruit our first Director of Development, whose role will be to work with the global community to grow our fundraising income substantially in the coming years. As a member of the executive leadership team, they will lead the Development Directorate and establish a fundraising operation that works collaboratively to deliver significant global income growth."

https://www.charityjob.co.uk/jobs/cochrane/director-of-development/792128?tsId=2
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Monetising the asset? I mean to say, look at the value of what they have created!
 
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Andy said:
Decision makers need constantly updated evidence synthesis

"As the world began to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic last year, there was an explosion of guidelines, position statements and protocols — many of low quality and contradictory. In March 2020, several of us approached the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, worried that the cacophony would create confusion and anxiety among already-stressed clinicians. We argued for key bodies to come together quickly and use robust, evidence-based processes to find signals in the noisy flow of COVID-19 research. Two weeks later, we had formed a task force and produced the first version of national, evidence-based COVID-19 guidelines for Australia. We made a commitment to update the guidelines every week, but this had never been done before. Our challenge was to work out how.

Typically, national guidelines draw on formal summaries of research evidence called systematic reviews, but the pandemic ‘broke the evidence pipeline’1. Take the example of remdesivir, an intravenous treatment originally developed for Ebola virus. In May 2020, weak but promising data suggested it could be used to treat COVID-19. Over the next 18 months, 52 papers from 14 randomized trials were published. Clinicians and policymakers had to make decisions on the basis of this shifting, and often contradictory, body of evidence. To help them, scholars produced systematic reviews — 30 in 2020. Many were out of date before publication because they left out recently published primary studies; most of the rest became out of date within weeks.

.....

This year, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) announced that living guidelines will be a pillar of its improvement strategy over the next five years. After piloting efforts for several years, the WHO this year began promoting living systematic reviews and living guidelines as standard methodology. It has used the approach for COVID-19, maternal and perinatal care and contraception. In the academic literature, about 100 living systematic reviews have been published since the start of 2020, compared with perhaps 15 in the 4 years previously."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03690-1
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I feel I should compliment the creative writing. Maybe Cochrane could try to live up to the mission statement rather than just saying it.

Is P.R. Philippe Ravaud?
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
What is 'fundraising income'?
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Charity-speak for a specific type of income. It's the result of work by a specialist fundraising team, and usually comes from sources other than a charity's traditional income streams ("We're skint this year, who haven't we asked yet?"). Examples might be grants from private trusts and foundations, commercial sponsorship deals, etc.

The same depressing term also appears on the main heads of arts charities' annual budgets. In small organisations the projected income will be significantly reduced by the six-month review, because it was never realistic to raise that much in the first place; it's just that you can't get grants from taxpayer-funded sources without adding in some imaginary match funding. In a good year some of it will even materialise, and the rest will be balanced out by 'support in kind'—the (sadly) non-imaginary exploitation of the fellow arts professionals who'll do you a massive favour by helping out for free.

Not sure whether they have to resort to asking people earning half the UK average salary to donate hours of unpaid time at Cochrane, though... :laugh:
 
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