Call for Abstracts
Submission deadline: Extended to Sunday 22 March 2026, 23:59 (GMT)
🚫 Submission deadline was 22nd MarchCochrane Evidence: Living, Trusted, Transformed
Cochrane invites researchers, policymakers, evidence producers, technologists, health professionals, community members, trainers, and learners from across health and beyond to submit abstracts for the 2026 Cochrane Colloquium.
The Colloquium will convene global experts in evidence, policy, data science, and digital innovation to help deliver a trusted evidence ecosystem. This ecosystem will integrate responsible, cutting edge technological advances while preserving quality, transparency, impact, and equitable support for global decision making.
Cochrane is transforming, shifting its publishing model to become a leader in providing continuously updated and policy relevant evidence across health and development domains. This transformation aligns with the direction of the World Health Organization, Wellcome Trust, ESIC, national ministries, and leading digital health and research partners who need evidence that is more timely, more connected, and more transparent.
The 2026 Colloquium will be a key moment to define, test, challenge, and co-create the partnerships needed to make this vision a reality. Through presentations, discussions, and collaboration, participants will help shape the future of how evidence is produced, synthesised, and used to inform policy and practice worldwide.
Participants will explore:
- Fostering research integrity and relevance through an improved evidence ecosystem that establishes feedback loops between evidence synthesis and primary research
- AI-enabled processes that accelerate evidence synthesis while maintaining trust, ensuring responsibility, transparency, quality, and human oversight.
- Equitable integration, coordination and partnership models, with a focus on regional priority-setting and equitable governance of global evidence infrastructure.
- Methods innovation for living, continuously updated and real-time syntheses within evidence ecosystems across health and other sectors.
- Overcoming distrust in evidence with a focus on fostering critical thinking and countering misinformation and disinformation.
The Colloquium brings together policymakers and funders, researchers and methodologists, clinicians, guideline and health technology assessment groups, technology and data partners, and civil society organisations. Together, we will explore what a modern, agile, and globally connected evidence system should look like and how to strengthen the pathway from data to synthesis, policy, and practice so that evidence remains trustworthy, independent, usable, and timely.
‘Cochrane Evidence: Living, Trusted, Transformed’ is both a vision and a call to action. We encourage you to contribute your work and join this global conversation.
Abstract Themes and topics
Authors are invited to submit abstracts aligned with one of the following themes.
Theme 1 — From static reviews to a learning and living ecosystem
Topics include:
1.1 Collaborative living evidence dashboards and topic hubs
1.2 Maintaining rigour in living evidence synthesis
1.3 Prioritising topics for living evidence synthesis
1.4 Real-time evidence pipelines in practice
1.5 Open science principles
1.6 Improving relevance, quality, and efficiency of primary research
1.7 Research integrity in living evidence ecosystems
1.8 Integrating evidence synthesis and evidence production systems
1.9 Integrating new trial data in real time
1.10 Living evidence products
1.11 Integration of living evidence into decision support systems
1.12 Sustainable financing for global living evidence infrastructure
1.13 Value demonstration: relevance, reuse, impact with trustworthiness maintenance
1.14 Innovative business models
Theme 2 — Responsible AI in evidence synthesis
Topics include:
2.1 AI-assisted stages of evidence synthesis and guideline development
2.2 AI governance frameworks and ethical safeguards
2.3 Mitigating impact of commercial interests in AI
2.4 Human-in-the-loop processes
2.5 Tool evaluation frameworks, including ESIC Living Inventory
2.6 Policy and guideline considerations for AI-enabled evidence
2.7 Research integrity
2.8 Reproducibility across models
2.9 Management of errors and methodological challenges of real-time updates
2.10 Scaling, standardising and mainstreaming AI use
2.11 Biases associated with LLM use for evidence synthesis
2.12 Strategies to deliver Cochrane evidence directly to AI assistants
2.13 Integrations for direct evidence flow to clinical systems, policy tools, and AI assistants
2.14 AI-supported knowledge translation
Theme 3 — Equity, co-production, inclusiveness, partnerships
Topics include:
3.1 ESIC regional and sectoral hub models
3.2 Priority setting at different levels
3.3 Approaches for evidence co-production with government, United Nations, World Health Organization, and other global programmes
3.4 Partnering for open science and data sharing
3.5 Co-production for timely knowledge translation and practical implementation of evidence synthesis results
3.6 Co-governance models for shared platforms
3.7 Strengthening capacity for AI-enabled processes in LMICs
3.8 Equitable governance of global evidence infrastructure
3.9 Cultural and linguistic contextualisation
3.10 Co-produced, context-responsive guidelines and implementation
3.11 Shifting power towards a more equitable evidence ecosystem
3.12 Patient and Public Involvement
3.13 Engaging with patients as partners
Theme 4 — Methods innovation for contextualised living evidence
Topics include:
4.1 Methods for living and ‘always-up to date’ syntheses
4.2 Combining clinical, public health, and social/SDG evidence
4.3 Methods development for policy scale evidence synthesis
4.4 Methods for contextualisation of evidence from a review to inform decision-making
4.5 Assessing certainty of evidence in dynamic systems
4.6 Approaches for multi-outcome, multi-intervention synthesis
4.7 Methods for integrating different types of evidence, e.g. real-world data, evaluation reports
4.8 Methods for detecting new evidence signals
4.9 Methods for detecting research fraud and how to deal with this
4.10 Methods for identifying research waste or research gaps
4.11 Innovative methods for cross-sector synthesis
4.12 Applicability of methods from non-health sectors
Theme 5: Overcoming distrust in evidence
Topics include:
5.1 Innovative and context-specific knowledge translation methods
5.2 Evidence brokers as intermediaries to build trust
5.3 Standards in science communication products
5.4 Countering misinformation and disinformation
5.5 Strengthening evidence literacy for researchers, communities, politicians, media, and decision-makers
5.6 Enhancing critical thinking
5.7 Fostering digital and information literacy
5.8 Assessing credibility of the sources of evidence
5.9 Misinformation and disinformation regarding AI performance and use for evidence synthesis