| Sir Iain Chalmers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Iain Geoffrey Chalmers |
| Alma mater | Middlesex Hospital Medical School, University of London (MBBS) |
| Known for | Cochrane |
| Awards |
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Sir Iain Geoffrey Chalmers is a British health services researcher, one of the founders of 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 and two years (1969–1970) in the Gaza Strip. 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. 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 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 Cochrane Collaboration.
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 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
- ^ Hawkes, N (2014). "Lifetime Achievement Award 2014: Sir Iain Chalmers". BMJ. 348: g2921. doi:10.1136/bmj.g2921. PMID 24817068. S2CID 206902160.
- "CHALMERS, Sir Iain (Geoffrey)". Who's Who 2014, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 2014; online edn, Oxford University Press.(subscription required)
- ^ The Cochrane Collaboration Archived 30 November 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- James Lind Library Archived 7 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- James Lind Alliance Archived 10 August 2015 at the Wayback Machine
- "Iain Chalmers: Guilty, obsessional, and frustrated". BMJ. 347: f6152. 2013. doi:10.1136/bmj.f6152. S2CID 220096764.
- Sanai, Leyla (2005). "Sir Iain Chalmers". BMJ. 331 (7525): s214. doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7525.s214. S2CID 220108371.
- Watts, Geoff (2006). "Iain Chalmers: Maverick master of medical evidence". The Lancet. 368 (9554): 2203. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(06)69879-6. PMID 17189019. S2CID 46317599.
- ^ Starr, Mark; Chalmers, Iain; Clarke, Mike; Oxman, Andrew D (2009). "The origins, evolution, and future of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews". International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. 25: 182–195. doi:10.1017/s026646230909062x. PMID 19534840.
- ^ Chalmers, Iain; Murray Enkin; Marc J.N.C. Keirse (1989). Effective Care in Pregnancy and Childbirth. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192615589. Retrieved 31 May 2014.
- ^ Fox, Daniel M (2011). "Systematic Reviews and Health Policy: The Influence of a Project on Perinatal Care since 1988". Milbank Quarterly. 89 (3): 425–449. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0009.2011.00635.x. PMC 3214717. PMID 21933275.
- Agreements Archived 17 October 2010 at the Wayback Machine
- "The London Gazette". www.thegazette.co.uk (Supplement 55879). 19 June 2000. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
- "Who is behind this website?". www.testingtreatments.org/?nabm=0. NHS (National Institute for Health Research. 2016. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
- Oxford, prepared by National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, University of (1985). A Classified bibliography of controlled trials in perinatal medicine, 1940 - 1984. Oxford : Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192615664.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Enkin, Murray; Chalmers, Iain (1982). Effectiveness and Satisfaction in Antenatal Care. Cambridge University Press.
- Smith, R; Chalmers, I (2001). "Britain's gift: A "Medline" of synthesised evidence". BMJ. 323 (7327): 1437–1438. doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7327.1437. PMC 1121895. PMID 11751342.
- Schulz, Kenneth F; Chalmers, I; Hayes, R. J; Altman, D. G (1995). "Empirical Evidence of Bias". JAMA. 273 (5): 408–12. doi:10.1001/jama.1995.03520290060030. PMID 7823387.
- Starr, M; Chalmers, I; Clarke, M; Oxman, AD (July 2009). "The origins, evolution, and future of The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews". International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. 25 Suppl 1: 182–95. doi:10.1017/s026646230909062x. PMID 19534840.
- Chalmers, Iain (2005). "Access controls on bmj.com: Restore true open access to bmj.com". BMJ. 330 (7496): 904.1. doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7496.904. PMC 556171.
- Chalmers, I; Haynes, B (1994). "Systematic Reviews: Reporting, updating, and correcting systematic reviews of the effects of health care". BMJ. 309 (6958): 862–865. doi:10.1136/bmj.309.6958.862. PMC 2541052. PMID 7950620.
- Chalmers, I; Milne, I; Tröhler, U; Vandenbroucke, J; Morabia, A; Tait, G; Dukan, E; James Lind Library Editorial Team (2008). "The James Lind Library: Explaining and illustrating the evolution of fair tests of medical treatments" (PDF). The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. 38 (3): 259–64. PMID 19227602. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 May 2011.
- Senior, K (2009). "Unique, multilingual resource on testing health-care treatments". Bulletin of the World Health Organization. 87 (6): 412–413. doi:10.2471/BLT.09.030609 (inactive 5 December 2024). PMC 2686217. PMID 19565116.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of December 2024 (link) - Evans, Imogen; Thornton, Hazel; Chalmers, Iain (2011). Testing Treatments: Better Research for Better Healthcare. Pinter & Martin Publishers. ISBN 978-1905177493. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
- "About Us". mydeath-decision.org. Retrieved 25 March 2021.