Cochrane-REWARD prize - 2017 Award Winner: SYRCLE

When it received the joint second Cochrane-REWARD prize in 2017,SYRCLE (the SYstematic Review Center for Laboratory animal Experimentation) was focused on encouraging the use of systematic reviews of animal studies to reduce waste and improve quality. Since then, SYRCLE has evolved, and here Merel Ritskes-Hoitinga gives an overview of how things have developed.SYRCLE started in the Netherlands with the aim of improving the reliability of laboratory animal research and its relevance for patients by using systematic reviews. Systematic reviews have not been commonly used for animal studies, yet we saw the potential of implementing them to identify knowledge gaps, reduce duplication and improve the design of future animal and clinical studies.We have developed an education programme designed to support researchers to conduct high-quality systematic reviews of animal studies. ZonMw (the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development) funding has helped us to offer workshops and coaching. We have also set up a global SYRCLE ambassador network who can help to spread the messages locally.Many of our systematic reviews of animal studies show that publication quality is quite low. They also show that the translation of findings from animal to human studies is quite poor. We think it is important to create transparency about this, in order to promote quality and translation of primary studies, as well as help speed up more use of replacement alternatives, such as human-ba...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news