Archie Cochrane: the man behind our name
Cochrane is named after Archie Cochrane, a Scottish medical researcher who greatly influenced the development of epidemiology, the study of how often diseases occur in different groups of people and why.
Professor Archibald Cochrane (1909-1988) is best known for his influential 1972 book, Effectiveness and Efficiency: Random Reflections on Health Services.
In this book, Cochrane suggested that, because resources would always be limited, they should be used to equitably provide forms of health care that properly designed evaluations had shown to be effective. Cochrane's views were informed in part by his experiences as a doctor in a prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War, where resources and treatments were urgently needed but extremely scarce.
In particular, Cochrane stressed the importance of using evidence from randomized controlled trials because these types of studies were likely to provide much more reliable information than other sources of evidence. Randomized controlled trials are now considered the most rigorous and robust primary research method to measure the effectiveness of a new intervention or treatment.
Cochrane's ideas were soon widely recognised as seminally important, by health professionals and people without health expertise. In 1987, in his Foreword to the book Effective care in pregnancy and childbirth (edited by Chalmers, Enkin, and Keirse), Cochrane described a systematic review of randomized controlled trials of care during pregnancy and childbirth as "a real milestone in the history of randomized trials and in the evaluation of care", and he suggested that other medical specialties should adopt the methods used.
In 1993, five years after Cochrane's death, the Cochrane Collaboration was established, with systematic reviews at the heart of our work to improve health for all.
Our logo
The circle formed by two 'C' shapes on the outside of our logo represents our global collaboration.
The lines within the circle illustrate the summary results from an iconic systematic review. Each horizontal line represents the results of one study, while the diamond represents the combined result, which is our best estimate of whether the treatment is effective or harmful. The diamond sits clearly to the left of the vertical line representing 'no difference', therefore the evidence indicates that the treatment is beneficial. We call this representation a 'forest plot'.
This forest plot within our logo illustrates an example of the potential for systematic reviews to improve health care. It shows that corticosteroids given to women who are about to give birth prematurely can save the life of the newborn child.
Despite several trials showing the benefit of corticosteroids, adoption of the treatment among obstetricians was slow. The systematic review (originally published by Crowley et al. and subsequently updated) was influential in increasing use of this treatment. This simple intervention has probably saved thousands of premature babies.
