In September of 2019, members of the Adverse Effects Methods Group, along with other experts, met in Edmonton, Canada, for the consensus meeting of the update of CONSORT Harms.CONSORT Harms is an extension to CONSORT published in 2004. In 2017, a review of the literature was performed and found that the reporting of harms in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) remains inadequate. This prompted the formation of an initiative to update CONSORT Harms by deploying a modified Delphi survey comprising two electronic rounds and one in-person meeting.

This was re-posted from the Methods website on 25 November 2020.

From September 29 to 30th of 2016, the group had a successful meeting to discuss the latest version of our Cochrane Handbook chapter, training events, resources, and much more. The meeting theme was “Development of guidance for the identification and quality assessment of adverse effects in systematic reviews” and we were also glad to receive the support of a few external experts who kindly joined us: Barbara Jennings, Jamie J Kirkham and Julian Higgins.

Andrew was a pioneer in so many ways. His passion for patients as an important and authentic source of information was ahead of its time. There is much opportunity (and need) to learn from patients in many parts of healthcare, including patient safety; Andrew taught us the importance of seeking the patient voice.It is with deep sadness that the Cochrane Adverse Effects Methods Group say goodbye to Andrew Herxheimer.

PRISMA harms checklist: improving harms reporting in systematic reviews was published in the BMJ 

Methods Innovation Fund (MIF) has began funding of new projects including the "Development of guidance for inclusion of adverse effects in systematic reviews". Work began in January 2016 with an extensive search of the evidence to inform this guidance.On completion of this research, we aim to produce an update of the Cochrane Handbook as well as online training material and uptodate workshops.

WorkshopsAdverse effects in systematic reviews: challenges for formulating the question and searching for different studies and sources of informationReporting adverse events in reviews and the PRISMA HarmsTerminology challenges for data extraction and analysis of data on adverse effects