What we do

We support evidence-based clinical decision-making in priority areas for Australian health care settings.

To do this we:

  • convene the sector (clinicians, consumers, policymakers, organisations, researchers) to promote and build multidisciplinary collaboration

  • provide living evidence syntheses

  • develop living guidelines

  • conduct research to improve our impact

Delivering Living Evidence

Building capacity for delivering living systematic reviews and evidence-based guideline recommendations that are reliable, accessible and continuously updated as new research becomes available.

We accelerate evidence

Accelerating the potential for new research to drive better health outcomes and better value healthcare in Australia.

We’re global leaders and partners

Maintaining Australia’s position at the forefront of global efforts to develop Living Evidence platforms, processes and partnerships.

Our history

2014

Cochrane Australia staff, based at Monash University Melbourne, commence early work to develop and test the suite of technical tools and streamlined processes that underpin the Living Evidence model through Project Transform, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Cochrane Game Changer Initiative from 2014–18.

February 2014: Living systematic reviews: an emerging opportunity to narrow the evidence-practice gap

2017

First ‘Living Guidelines’ pilots, evaluations and guidance developed and led out of Cochrane Australia at Monash University.

Stroke Foundation receive MRFF Grant; first funding for a living guideline.

September 2017: Series - Living Systematic Reviews

2018

Building on the work of Project Transform, Cochrane Australia led the establishment of the Australian Living Evidence Consortium in May 2018 to bring together a group of close collaborators and early adopters of the Living Evidence approach in Australia.

Members of the Consortium committed to evidence-based methods for developing guideline recommendations, embraced innovation and supported a collaborative approach to advancing Living Evidence capacity in Australia.

 

2019

2020

In March 2020, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak and during a time of extraordinary clinical uncertainty, ALEC rapidly convened the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce – bringing together 200+ contributors from 35 national peak health bodies representing all major clinical groups.

It quickly demonstrated that partnerships are a foundational element of living evidence production, drawing on professional, research and consumer groups and global organisations including WHO, NICE, Cochrane Canada and the Danish Health Authority.

November 2020: Weekly updates of national living evidence-based guidelines: methods for the Australian living guidelines for care of people with COVID-19

The Living Evidence for Diabetes Consortium published their first living guideline.

February 2020: Breathing life into Australian diabetes clinical guidelines

2021

The National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce continued to set an unprecedented pace for updating clinical guidelines, paving the way for other international guideline developers.

Highlights included:

  • Rapid increase in guidelines and flowchart usage as COVID-19 cases rose nationally, reflecting the value clinicians place on evidenced based, current and reliable guidelines 

  • An expanding portfolio of recommendations for effective treatments for people with COVID-19, including the first treatments for mild COVID-19 

  • Taskforce Infection Prevention and Control Guidelines developed within an extremely complex evidence environment and approved with 100% consensus by the member organisations at a critical time for Australian healthcare workers

  • Consumer Panel members with lived experience of COVID-19 further strengthening the Guidelines with their unique insights 

  • International collaboration with guideline developers including NICE

  • Significant improvements in the quality and breadth of media reporting of evidence-based treatments, highlighted by some outstanding science communication by journalists and media organisations setting new industry standards.

March 2021: Weekly updates of national living evidence-based guidelines: methods for the Australian living guidelines for care of people with COVID-19

December 2021: Decision makers need constantly updated evidence synthesis

2022

In October 2022 the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce extended their scope to cover urgent and emerging diseases beyond COVID-19, with the first set of treatment guidelines for MPX and became the National Clinical Evidence Taskforce.

January 2022: The Australian living guidelines for the clinical care of people with COVID-19: What worked, what didn’t and why, a mixed methods process evaluation

February 2022: Feasibility of national living guideline methods: The Australian Stroke Guidelines

October 2022: The Living Guidelines Handbook

2023

So while our name has changed a little - our original ALEC acronym and our commitment to producing trusted, real time evidence for all Australians lives on. The collaboration is committed to realising a future where living evidence is the norm, a single source of truth for clinicians and consumers across Australia.

We’re now embracing the opportunity to take the experiences and expertise gained throughout the pandemic, along with the development of world-first ALEC guidelines in stroke, diabetes, kidney disease and arthritis to underpin and inspire our next chapter.

While funding for NCET ended in July 2023, ALEC continues to draw on the proven NCET living guidelines model for our latest major project - the five year, Commonwealth Government funded Living Evidence for Australian Pregnancy and Postnatal Care (LEAPP) guidelines. We’ll also continue our work in chronic diseases, and expand to cover the increasingly critical areas of climate health and infectious diseases.

Leadership and governance

The Australian Living Evidence Collaboration is led and governed by Cochrane Australia within the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University in Melbourne.

An interim Strategic Advisory Committee provides strategic guidance to the ALEC Executive team on how best to achieve ALEC’s mission and vision.

Strategic Advisory Committee

Sharon McGowan, MBA, GAICD
Chair

Sharon is the Chief Executive Officer of RANZCP. Having spent her career in the health and NFP sector, Sharon has a wealth of leadership and governance experience gained over the past 30 years.

  • She is an experienced communicator, with a background in health service management, community engagement, advocacy, culture transformation and philanthropy. Originally trained as a registered nurse, Sharon has worked in Australia and the UK with a range of health, public sector and not-for-profit organisations.

    She is an experienced Board Director and currently Chair of the Australian Living Evidence Consortium, a group whose vision is to accelerate the application of medical research to actionable guidance for front line clinicians using a “living” approach to evidence synthesis. Prior to joining the College, Sharon was CEO of the National Stroke Foundation for 7 years, growing the Foundations’ revenue and impact. Sharon is the immediate past Chair of the Australian Chronic Disease Prevention Alliance and the National COVID19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce Steering Committee.

    Sharon holds a Masters of Business Administration from Cranfield University in the UK, is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and has attended two short courses at Harvard Business School.

Professor Steve McGloughlin, BMed  FRACP  FCICM MPH&TM  IMHL (McGill)
Clinical Director (ex officio)

Professor Steve McGloughlin is an intensive care physician and infectious diseases physician at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. Since 2017 he has been the director of the Alfred ICU, a 56-bed quarternary intensive care unit specialising in trauma, advanced cardiac support, ECMO and burns.

  • He was the chair of the ANZICS COVID-19 guideline committee and has been a member of the Australian Therapeutic Guidelines writing committee for the past 8 years and also on the most recent version of the Surviving Sepsis Guideline.

    He has published in a number of major international journals and completed a Masters of Public Health and a Masters of International Health Leadership. He is also a member of several major national and international guidelines including the surviving sepsis campaign, therapeutic guidelines and the National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce.Description text goes here

Professor Tari Turner, PhD, MBus (eBus&Com), BBiomedSci, PGradCert (Biostats)
Academic Director (ex officio)

Tari Turner is a Professor (Research) at Cochrane Australia and along with her role as Director of ALEC, is Director of the National Clinical Evidence Taskforce, leading development of living guidance for COVID-19 and MPX.

  • Tari leads research developing and evaluating methods for living evidence syntheses, including living systematic reviews and living guidelines; and translating synthesised evidence into improved healthcare practice and policy. Her passion is supporting evidence-based decision-making to ensure the best possible outcomes, particularly for women and children in low resource settings. She enjoys designing, finding, synthesising and communicating research, and she loves seeing research actually make a difference.

    Tari is an Editor for The Cochrane Library and Cochrane Evidence Synthesis and Methods, and a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group to the WHO Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research. She is an Honorary Principal Research Fellow at the Burnet Institute, a Senior Research Fellow for 3ie and a member of the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood Ethics Committee.

    Tari holds a Doctor of Philosophy from Monash University, a Master of Business from Swinburne University, a Post Graduate Certificate in Biostatistics from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor of Biomedical Science from Monash University.

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Professor Sally Green, PhD, B App Sci (Physiotherapy)
Member
Sally Green is Co-Director of Cochrane Australia and Deputy Head (Research) of the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University.

  • She holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine from Monash and has several competitively funded research projects which aim to improve health outcomes by investigating the most effective and efficient pathway of knowledge from research result to sustained change in clinical practice and policy. Sally is also a member of Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Synthesis and Translation of Research Evidence (SToRE) Advisory Group and is a member of Cochrane’s international Governing Board.

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Professor Julian Elliott, MBBS, FRACP, PhD 
Founder and Member
Julian Elliott is one of the world’s leading researchers in the use of technology for evidence synthesis.

  • He developed the Living Evidence model, was the founding Chair of the Australian Living Evidence Consortium and established the Australian National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce, both based at Cochrane Australia within Monash University’s School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine. Julian is also the co-founder and CEO of Covidence, a non-profit technology company that provides the most widely used software platform for systematic reviews globally. In 2017 Julian was the recipient of the Australian Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research. Description text goes here

 
 

Advisory Groups

Evidence & Methods Advisory Group

  • Heath White

  • Geraint Duggan

  • Britta Tendal

  • Sarah Norris

  • Sam Whittle

  • Kelvin Hill

 
 

Our team

Program and Business Management

  • Clinical Director: Steve McGloughlin

  • Academic Director: Tari Turner

  • Director of Strategy & Programs: Eloise Hudson

  • Operations Manager: Tsharni Zazryn

  • Research Support Officer: Amy Moore

Communications

  • Director of Communications: Shauna Hurley

  • Communications Coordinator: Kayla Voss

Policy Engagement

  • Senior Research Fellow: Samantha Chakraborty

Consumer Engagement

Evaluation

  • Senior Research Fellow: Tanya Millard

Systematic Review, Evidence and Methods

  • Director of Evidence & Methods: Heath White

  • Guidelines Program Manager: Miranda Cumpston

  • Search Specialist: Steve McDonald

  • Research Fellow – Evidence Officer: Matt Quigley

  • Research Fellow – Evidence Officer: Shannon Barnes

  • Research Fellow – Evidence Officer: Shaira Batista

  • Evidence Officer: Rachel Silk

  • Evidence Officer: Loyal Pattuwage

  • Evidence Officer: Abdulbasit Seid

Partners and funders

Partners

Philanthropic supporters

Government Support

Our member organisations

Members of the Australian Living Evidence Collaboration are not-for-profit, Australian-based organisations that have a shared agreement to:

  • Support the mission, vision, goals and founding principles of the Collaboration

  • Commit to working together to achieve the goals of the Collaboration

  • Collaborate to share knowledge and contribute to the development of shared tools and methods

  • Catalyse investment and capacity building for Living Evidence to the greatest extent possible

 

Members

International networks

 
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