The Cochrane Collaboration is an international non-profit and independent organization, dedicated to making up-to-date, accurate information about the effects of healthcare readily available worldwide. It produces and disseminates systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and promotes the search for evidence in the form of clinical trials and other studies of interventions. The Cochrane Collaboration was founded in 1993 and named for the British epidemiologist, Archie Cochrane.

The major product of the Collaboration is the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews which is published quarterly as part of The Cochrane Library.

The United States Cochrane Center (USCC) was established in December 2002, when the New England Cochrane Center at Boston, the New England Cochrane Center at Providence, and the San Francisco Cochrane Center merged to form a single registered entity with three offices.

The overall mission of the US Cochrane Center is to further the Collaboration's goal of making widely available systematic reviews of evidence from randomized controlled trials of the effects of health care. A specific objective of the US Cochrane Center Main Office in Baltimore, MD is to help Cochrane Collaborators prepare systematic reviews by coordinating the development of a comprehensive central database of reports of randomized and controlled clinical trials.