Background

The UK Cochrane Centre was established at the end of 1992, by the National Health Service Research and Development Programme. It is part of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). During our initial period of funding (1992-1995), the Centre's objectives included a number of activities intended to promote international collaboration in this work. Centre staff worked with others to help establish The Cochrane Collaboration, which was launched at the first Cochrane Colloquium in Oxford in October 1993. The Collaboration is now an international organization with more than 28,000 participants in over 100 countries. The largest number of people continues to be in the UK, with more than 5000 authors of Cochrane reviews based in this country. The UK Cochrane Centre is the reference Centre within the Collaboration for people in the UK, Ireland and a number of other countries. It has one Branch, in Bahrain.

Objectives

 In 2008, the quinquennial review of the UKCC recommended that the NIHR should continue to provide funding until March 2015 and a new programme of work was agreed in 2009. The main elements of this work are a continuation of our training and support work, an increased focus on knowledge brokerage, and a methodology and audit programme to support these activities.