User-friendly reporting and formatting of Cochrane Reviews of interventions: Final report

Background: Cochrane’s mission is to promote evidence-informed health decision making by producing high-quality, relevant, accessible systematic reviews. But Cochrane Reviews are long and complex, posing difficulties for both review users and review producers. Goal 2 in the Cochrane Strategy to 2020 is to make Cochrane evidence accessible and useful to everybody, everywhere in the world. For Cochrane intervention reviews to be accessible to people making decisions, users need to be able to quickly find the information they need and to understand that information.

What we did: From October 2017 to December 2018, we developed a prototype of a new interactive format for intervention reviews that would make them easier to navigate and understand for both expert and non-expert target audiences, as well as less time consuming for authors and editors to write and peer review. We reviewed evidence about presenting findings from systematic reviews and drew on our own experience. We used a human-centred design approach, which entailed cycles of prototype development, feedback collection, and analysis, and idea-generation. We collected feedback from a wide range of stakeholders, through queries to an Advisory Group, individual user-test interviews, and meetings at Cochrane events where we presented and discussed prototypes.

Acknowledgements

This project was initiated by Sasha Sheppard and Simon Lewin from the EPOC satellite in Norway, and funded by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The following working group from EPOC managed and carried out the project: Sarah Rosenbaum, Andy Oxman, Newton Opiyo, Simon Lewin, Claire Glenton and Sasha Sheppard. Nandi Siefried re-wrote four example reviews.

Appendices 4, 5, 6, 7, and 13 are excel files. They are available on request to the corresponding author (saro@fhi.no)