Prospective Meta-Analyses and Cochrane's role in embracing next generation methodologies.

Abstract

Cochrane systematic reviews and meta-analyses are regarded as the ‘gold standard’ for high-quality information and are widely used to inform healthcare policy and practice. The nature of how conventional systematic reviews are conceived and conducted after at least some of the included studies are completed means that reviewers can inadvertently introduce bias when faced with heterogeneous studies that cannot be easily synthesized. Prospective meta-analysis (PMA) is now gaining traction as a means of reducing research waste and producing meaningful and less biased evidence syntheses. PMA has been lauded as a ‘next- generation’ method, and Ioannidis has argued that “all primary original research may be designed, executed, and interpreted as prospective meta-analysis”.