[5] The group conducts systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and diagnostic tests and publishes them in the Cochrane Library.

[10] It was developed in response to Archie Cochrane's call for up-to-date, systematic reviews of all relevant randomised controlled trials in the field of healthcare.

[14] Cochrane's suggestion that methods used to prepare and maintain reviews of controlled trials in pregnancy and childbirth be applied more widely was taken up by the Research and Development Programme, initiated to support the National Health Service.

funds were provided to establish a "Cochrane Centre", to collaborate with others, in the UK and elsewhere, to facilitate systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials across all areas of healthcare.[16][when?]

[17][18] In 2013 the organization published an editorial describing its efforts to train people in developing nations to perform Cochrane reviews.

[21] Gøtzsche announced that this had happened via an open letter, in which he said there is a "growing top-down authoritarian culture and an increasingly commercial business model" taking root at Cochrane that "threaten the scientific, moral and social objectives of the organization".

[21] A 2004 editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal noted that Cochrane reviews appear to be more up to date and of better quality than other reviews, describing them as "the best single resource for methodologic research and for developing the science of meta-epidemiology" and crediting them with leading to methodological improvements in the medical literature.

A broader analysis across multiple therapeutic areas reached similar conclusions but was performed by Cochrane authors.