An undate from the Cochrane Collaboration which does not leave me with a great sense of confidence...!!!???
Shall keep you posted, but it looks like being several months away yet.
And this is supposed to be one of the world's most respected and accepted ways of seeing/doing this sort of stuff.
Vicki
A. Sender: Kathie Clark [kclark@mcmaster.ca]
Subject: Collaboration Press Release
The following is a press release that will shortly be distributed by John Wiley
& Sons on behalf of The Cochrane Collaboration with regard to the Cochrane
review 'Murray E, Burns J, See Tai S, Lai R, Nazareth I. Interactive Health
Communication Applications for people with chronic disease. The Cochrane Database
of Systematic Reviews 2004, Issue 4. Art. No.: CD004274. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.
CD004274.pub2'. This review was found to have errors. The Collaboration is
distributing this press release in order to be open and transparent about the
problems with this particular review.
Press release:
Contact: Nick Royle, Chief Executive Officer, The Cochrane Collaboration
Phone: +44 (0) 1865 310138
Email:
secretariat@cochrane.org
Update to October press release 'No Conclusive Evidence That Interactive Programmes For
Chronically Ill People May Be Detrimental'
November 2004: The Cochrane Collaboration wishes to report that the review 'Interactive
Health Communication Applications for people with chronic disease' (1) has been found to
contain errors. The review originally determined that, among other findings, chronically
ill people using interactive programmes had worse clinical outcomes than those who did
not. Regrettably, errors in data analysis meant that these outcomes were reported
incorrectly. The authors are currently re-analysing their data and will be resubmitting
their results to The Cochrane Library (2) in the future. It is expected that the revised
results will be published in April 2005.
Interactive Health Communication Applications (IHCAs) are computer-based interactive
programmes for patients that combine health information with at least one mode of
support - social support, decision support or behavioural change support. IHCAs are
designed to provide people with chronic disease with the opportunity to become better
informed about their disease and the various treatment options available.
The Cochrane Collaboration supports high standards of quality control and welcomes
comments on and corrections to any reviews published in The Cochrane Library. Compared
with traditional paper journal publishing, the Collaboration's open and transparent
process ensures that all Cochrane reviews are available for real-time correction, providing
experts and healthcare consumers alike with the opportunity to give their input. Crucially,
this process also allows researchers and others to inform review authors of previously
unreported or unrecognised trial results, allowing them to improve the quality of reviews
as they are periodically updated over time. The Cochrane Collaboration regrets that this
particular review was found to contain inaccuracies, apologizes unreservedly, has acted
swiftly to mitigate both this error (which arose from individual error and not systemic
failures) and the likelihood of it being repeated, and undertakes to ensure that the
corrected results are published as soon as possible.
Notes to the Editor
1. Murray et al: Interactive Health Communication Applications for people with chronic
disease (Issue 4, 2004, The Cochrane Library).
2. The Cochrane Library contains high quality healthcare information, including Systematic
Reviews from The Cochrane Collaboration. These reviews bring together research on the effects
of health care and are considered the gold standard for determining the relative effectiveness
of different interventions. The Cochrane Collaboration (
www.cochrane.org) is a UK registered
international charity and the world's leading producer of systematic reviews. It has been
demonstrated that Cochrane Systematic Reviews are of comparable or better quality and are
updated more often than the reviews published in print journalsª.
3. In October 2004, The Cochrane Library was launched with a new interface through Wiley
InterScience and can be accessed at
http://www.thecochranelibrary.com. Guest users may access
abstracts of all reviews in the database, and members of the media may request full access to
the contents of the Library.