The COVID-19 pandemic and its associated measures have brought added urgency to the need for sustainable health care.[1,2] The rapid reorganization of health care and the drive to initiate new research has contributed to a substantial burden on financial and human resources. There has also been considerable impact on the delivery of health care with routine investigations and treatments being postponed or cancelled, and societal lockdowns, and spending to combat COVID-19 causing a global economic crisis. The available resources for non-COVID-19 health care are declining in many countries [3] and are likely to continue to do so for some time to come, while the need for healthcare services may increase due to delays to diagnosis and treatment. Consequently, global health care is facing considerable new challenges to the sustainability of its systems in both high- and low-resource settings. It is imperative that the limited resources available for health care are used efficiently and effectively. They need to be utilized in ways that will generate the most benefit for patients and be prioritized for those with the greatest need. Healthcare systems need to deliver high-value care, while lower-value or inefficient care needs to be identified, safely reduced and, where appropriate, stopped. To ensure sustainability and equity in healthcare systems, decisions about this should be transparent, informed by reliable and robust evidence, and in keeping with equity and ethical principles. 

This Special Collection provides examples of resource-intense interventions, including those requiring extra healthcare visits, for which there is high or moderate certainty evidence that they confer clinically small or no effects, and for which there is some evidence of harm to patients. The reviews are particularly relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic, and should inform guideline, and policy developers, and decision makers planning health care, both during and after the pandemic. This Special Collection is intended as the first in a series, with subsequent Collections focusing on other healthcare interventions shown to being ineffective, harmful, or unproven.

We will be continually adding updates and additions to Cochrane Evidence, Chinese Version: 取消低價值醫療照護
◆Read more about Cochrane's response to COVID-19, click here