The Cochrane Collaboration has published an updated priority list, which ‘includes new titles from the Effective Practice & Organisation of Care, Eyes and Vision, Oral Health, and Public Health Groups. Twenty-two titles on the list have been published – seven protocols, eight reviews, and seven updates. Three of the published reviews/updates were press released – Interventions for enhancing medication adherence, Comparison of routes for achieving parenteral access with a focus on the management of patients with Ebola Virus Disease, and Chlorhexidine skin or cord care for prevention of mortality and infections in neonates.’

More information on the new list, and the list itself, can be downloaded here: http://www.cochrane.org/news/updated-list-cochrane-priority-reviews-now-available

A previous version was published in January 2015 and was discussed on HIFA. Below are some of the comments from HIFA members about the previous version:

‘The consultation appears to have relatively higher input from high-income countries as compared with low- and middle-income countries. It would be interesting for an independent reviewer to ‘review the review list’ to assess correlation with, for example, global burden of disease.’ Neil Pakenham-Walsh, UK

‘It would also be interesting to review the extent of input from patients and carers into the compilation of this list.’ Caroline Struthers, UK

‘None of these countries are developing countries and cannot comment on the priorities of a developing country. This has to be decided by a group and consortium of healthcare professionals and organization based and working in low resourced developing countries… Cochrane library should engage more researchers and patient groups from low resourced countries in order to make this exercise of systematic reviews more meaningful. Otherwise it will only be an academic exercise which might benefit few patients in the developed world without any meaningful real time impact on majority of the patients in the low resourced countries’ Farooq Rathore, Pakistan

‘One of the important things to note about the priority topics identified by Cochrane that no standard methodology was applied by different review groups. Different Cochrane review groups adopted different methods which they assessed suited their best interest and as per the resources available with them.’ Soumyadeep Bhaumik, India

‘Decision-makers and funders have begun to increasingly engage representatives of patients and healthcare consumers to ensure that research becomes more relevant. However, disadvantaged groups and their needs may not be integrated into the priority-setting process since they do not have a ‘political voice’ or are unable to organise into interest groups… Few strategies address the question of engaging and meeting the needs of disadvantaged groups, despite the fact that previous studies have shown that disadvantaged groups value health problems differently.’ (Bhaumik, Soumyadeep et al. Ethics and equity in research priority-setting: stakeholder engagement and the needs of disadvantaged groups. Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, [S.l.], mar. 2015. ISSN 0975-5691. Available at: http://ijme.in/index.php/ijme/article/view/2195/4699 )

Best wishes,

Neil

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