Christian Medical College, Vellore is a university affiliated teaching hospital, located in South India. The hospital was started by Dr. Ida Scudder as a one bed dispensary in 1900 and has now grown into a 2800-bed tertiary care hospital. It has been involved in research relevant to India from its inception.
The Centre is governed by the Principal (Dean) Dr. Anna Pulimood and has the approval and support of the hospital administration headed by Dr. JV Peter, the Director who is also a member of the unit. The Clinical Epidemiology Unit, The BV Moses Centre as well as the Biostatistics department of the hospital are the three primary departments that have come together to be a part of this initiative, along with numerous faculty of the hospital.
The institute joined the Cochrane family in 2004 as a branch of the Australasian Cochrane Centre. In 2008 it became the South Asian Cochrane Network Centre with Prof Prathap Tharyan as the Director. In 2015 this was rebranded as Cochrane South Asia. After the restructuring process, in July 2021 we joined Cochrane India as an affiliate centre.
Since its inception in 2004 the centre has been involved in educating undergraduate, postgraduate and faculty of medical, nursing and allied health branches on what evidence based medicine (EBM) is. The centre has conducted numerous teaching sessions and workshops on EBM and taught the basics of what a systematic review is and how it should be read and critiqued. Many faculty have been trained to use systematic review evidence to inform health policy.
The institute has trained thousands of researchers on Cochrane Protocol development, hand held them through Cochrane Reviews via Review completion workshops. These have been held in India as well as in Srilanka, Nepal and Malaysia. We have helped author numerous Cochrane Reviews that have been used in guidelines as well as policy briefs.
We continue teaching EBM, Systematic review interpretation, Protocol development for Cochrane and non-Cochrane systematic reviews as well as assistance in completing systematic reviews. We assist in knowledge translation of Cochrane reviews to local languages as well.
Admin Structure
Dean and Sponsor: Dr Anna Pulimood; princi@cmcvellore.ac.in
Director of the Institute: - Dr J V Peter; peterjohnvictor@yahoo.com.au
Centre Director: Dr Thambu David Sudarsanam; thambu@cmcvellore.ac.in
Centre Co-Director: Dr Mohan Shashikant Kamath; mohankamath@cmcvellore.ac.in
Senior Mentor: Dr Prathap Tharyan; prathaptharyan@gmail.com
Senior Bio-Statisticians
Dr Prasanna Samuel; Prasanna.samuel@cmcvellore.ac.in
Dr Grace Rebekah; gracerebekah@gmail.com
Prof L Jeyaseelan; ljey@hotmail.com
Mr. Richard Kirubakaran; richrichigo@gmail.com
Search Specialist: Mr. Jabez Paul Barnabaz; bvmc@cmcvellore.ac.in
Epidemiologist: Dr Satish Kumar; sathishkumar@cmcvellore.ac.in
Epidemiologist: Dr Vignesh Kumar Chandireseharan; vigneshmmc02@gmail.com
Epidemiologist: Dr Abraham Peedicayil; apeedicayil@yahoo.com
IT specialist: Mr Venkatesh P; kuttymusic@hotmail.com
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