The first post-pandemic colloquium took place in London from September 3-6, 2023.

It was attended by over 1000 people from 56 countries. Among these were 5 from Malaysia. Among these 5 was Ms Sonia Nde, a medical student from RUMC who participated in a poster presentation.                                                            
Sonia had never attended an international scientific meeting before. She said, ‘‘It helped me realise how many more career avenues I have in the future besides clinical medicine. I attended the student event. I realise now how much bias colours the evidence we have. We should question what we do in our clinical work. Does the science behind it meet up to scrutiny. Evidence-based medicine is a lot more than what we get as an undergraduate. We learned more about appraisal of papers and the assessing of the certainty of the evidence. We also learnt to question whether we should use the systematic reviews that we see and decide whether we should apply them in the clinical setting. Before the colloquium I was one of those people who judged the results of a research paper in terms of significance, i.e. as either significant or non-significant and didn’t realise the nuances of certainty of evidence.

I am really thankful for the opportunity to attend the colloquium. The best thing was the student session, but I also enjoyed manning out poster. I met some really interesting people.

             Sonia

Prof Lai Nai Ming from Taylors University another of the 5 Malaysians, has attended a number of Colloquia before. This is what he says about the value of attending: ‘’The Cochrane Colloquium is a gathering of all who aim to contribute to synthesising, disseminating and championing the highest level of human health evidence. The colloquium is not only for established authors of Cochrane reviews, but for new authors as well as those who wish to keep abreast of the skills and views in evidence synthesis from the leaders of the field and build a lasting personal connection from this wonderful collaboration. The colloquium is for all people, from evidence shapers such as authors, methods experts and policy makers, to evidence users such as practitioners and the public.

The most precious experience for me from attending the colloquium is the appreciation of the genuine goodwill of so many who truly wish to improve human health by their selfless contribution to this noble cause.

                                                                                  Prof Lai Nai Ming

Datuk Dr Nor Asiah from the National Institutes of Health has also been to previous Colloquia. She presented two posters. As a researcher and trainer, she finds that Colloquia certainly help keep her up to date on systematic review methods but also the poster sessions serve to build networks of people in similar roles and thus are another learning opportunity.

Cochrane Malaysia was represented by Prof Jacqueline Ho, Co-Director (picture on the right). She has also attended previous Colloquia. This  time she was on  two of the Colloquium organising committees and  was author or co-author on two of the Malaysian posters. She said,  'I love the way Cochrane values equity in their work. They started off  as a Eurocentric organisation but have made a huge effort to ensure  that it is a global organisation.'

The other Malaysian participant was Prof Prashanti Eachempati  (on the right as shown in the picture) from Manipal University College Malaysia (MUCM). Her work on priority setting in oral health resulted in her being on the faculty of two workshops as well as presenting a poster.