Sir Iain Geoffrey Chalmers is a British health services researcher, one of the founders of the

Cochrane Collaboration Cochrane is a British international charitable organisation formed to synthesize medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving health professionals, patients and policy makers. It includes ...

,The Cochrane Collaboration
and coordinator of the James Lind Initiative, which includes the James Lind Library and James Lind Alliance.

Education and career

Chalmers qualified in medicine in the mid-1960s, and then practised as a clinician in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and two years (1969–1970) in the

Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...

. In the mid-1970s, he became a full-time health services researcher with a particular interest in assessing the effects of care. Between 1978 and 1992, he was the first director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit in

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

. There, Chalmers led the development of the electronic ''Oxford Database of Perinatal Trials'' (ODPT) and a collection of systematic reviews of randomized trials of care in pregnancy and children published in the two-volume ''Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth'', co-authoring its summary, ''Guide to Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth''. The

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...

Research and Development Programme supported extending the approach to other areas of health care. In 1992, Chalmers was appointed director of the UK Cochrane Centre, leading to the development of the international

. Subsequently, he became founding editor of the James Lind Library, which documents the history and evolution of fair trials of treatments, and helped to establish the James Lind Alliance, a non-profit organization that "aims to identify the most important gaps in knowledge about the effects of treatments". The Library has established strategic agreements with international and non-profit organizations to disseminate its publications to a broad international and multilingual audience. Chalmers inspired champions all over the world leading to the development of the Cochrane Collaboration and by 2011 this collaboration had nearly 30,000 volunteers contributing towards summarising research evidence to improve health. His contributions have been instrumental in advancing international policies on research for health -such as PAHO's Policy on Research for Health, and to promote a better understanding of the importance of building bridges between users and producers of research for health policy and health care delivery. Chalmers was knighted in 2000. He continues to promote better research for better health care by increasing public appreciation of good research through Testing Treatments interactive and the James Lind Library, and by working with others to reduce waste in research.

Publications

* A Classified Bibliography of Controlled Trials in Perinatal Medicine 1940 – 1984 * Effectiveness and Satisfaction in Antenatal Care * Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth * Britain's gift: a "Medline" of synthesised evidence * Empirical Evidence of Bias * The origins, evolution and future of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews * Restore true open access to bmj.com * Systematic Reviews: Reporting, updating, and correcting systematic reviews of the effects of health care
Select Committee on Health: Memorandum by Sir Iain Chalmers (PI 29)
* James Lind Library * Testing Treatments
Testing Treatments Interactive

My Death, My Decision

Chalmers is a patron of the

right to die The right to die is a concept rooted in the belief that individuals have the Self-ownership, autonomy to make fundamental decisions about their own lives, including the choice to Suicide, end them or undergo voluntary euthanasia, central to the b ...

organization My Death, My Decision. My Death, My Decision wants to see a more compassionate approach to dying in the UK, including giving people the legal right to a physician-assisted death if that is their persistent wish.

References

External links

*
James Lind Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chalmers, Iain Living people British medical researchers Knights Bachelor National Health Service people 20th-century English medical doctors Cochrane Collaboration people Members of the National Academy of Medicine Date of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people)