Cochrane Crowd: new ways of involving consumers and patients in producing health evidence

Session: 

Oral session: Innovative solutions to challenges of evidence production (2)

Date: 

Sunday 16 September 2018 - 16:20 to 16:40

Location: 

Fintry Auditorium

All authors in correct order:

Noel-Storr A1, Thomas J2, Elliott J3, Mavergames C4, McDonald S3, Tovey D5, Green S6, Murano M6, Steele E6
1 Oxford University, UK
2 UCL, UK
3 Monash University, Australia
4 Cochrane, Germany
5 Cochrane, UK
6 Cochrane Australia, Australia
Presenting author and contact person

Presenting author:

Anna Noel-Storr

Contact person:

Anna Noel-Storr
Abstract text
Background:
Cochrane Crowd (http://crowd.cochrane.org), Cochrane’s citizen science platform, was launched in May 2016.

Objectives:
It aims to tackle the challenge of information overload, while at the same time provide meaningful ways in which anyone with an interest in health can contribute to the production of health evidence.

Methods:
The platform contains a range of different tasks that require contributors to classify or extract information from abstracts and papers. No prior knowledge or experience is assumed. Each task is accompanied by brief, interactive training. Contributors can work in areas of health of interest to them, and they can track their own progress and performance on each of the tasks available. Contribution is rewarded in the form of ‘badges’. In March 2018 a new area within Cochrane Crowd was launched called the Learning Zone. This area consists of micro-training modules that aim to give complete beginners an understanding of some of the key concepts important in understanding what makes a comparison fair.

In addition, teachers of evidence-based healthcare and others can now use Cochrane Crowd within their teaching environments through ‘Classmate’ (http://crowd.cochrane.org/classmate). This enables trainers to use the Cochrane Crowd tasks within their teaching environments to create fun activities and challenges.

Results:
Two-years after the launch of Cochrane Crowd, over 8500 contributors from 189 countries have signed up to take part. The number of classifications made across all tasks has exceeded 1.7 million, and over 50,000 reports of randomized trials have been identified for CENTRAL. Classmate, was launched in September 2017, and has had over 100 'learning activities' created based on Cochrane Crowd tasks.

Conclusions:
At a time where research output is growing at an increasing rate, new methods and processes are needed to help researchers and others keep up with the flood of information. Cochrane Crowd is helping to do that. In addition, the popularity of Cochrane Crowd has demonstrated just how much people want to be a part of the process of producing high quality health evidence quickly.

Patient or healthcare consumer involvement:
The Cochrane Crowd initiative offers anyone with an interest in health the chance to get involved and play an important role in helping to produce health evidence.

Relevance to patients and consumers: 

The Cochrane Crowd initiative has direct relevance to patients and consumers in that it offers people the chance to get involved and play an important role in helping to produce health evidence. In the last six months of the project we have worked hard to make the tasks and the platform as accessible as possible to people who are new to health research. This presentation will focus on those efforts.