Dear Colleagues and Friends,

We are happy to announce the establishment of Cochrane Russia as a branch of the Nordic Cochrane Centre with Co-ordinating hub at the Kazan Federal University, which has been approved last week by the Cochrane Central Executive!

The International Conference “Evidence-Based Medicine: achievements and barriers” will become an official launch of Cochrane Russia with detailed discussions of Cochrane Russia strategic development, development of strong network of Cochrane contributors/satellites all over the vast territory of the Russian Federation and Russian speaking countries.

This will be the first Cochrane event in Russia in history (!) and the third conference in Kazan that is totally independent of the pharmaceutical industry or other health technology manufactures.

At the conference we will discuss the most important issues of evidence-based approaches in health care delivery, health policy such as clinical guidelines, and how they are influenced by misleading health information; Cochrane evidence to inform decision-making; regulation and use of medicines; and conflicts of interest. All of these issues directly depend on rigorous evidence as the scientific basis of medicines' value to public health as well as the dissemination of Cochrane evidence to the health community and general public. (Read more...)