On April 18, 2023, Cochrane Executive Director Catherine Spencer, MBA, OBE visited the Czech Republic where she was invited by Dr. Miloslav Klugar, Director of Cochrane Czech Republic. Catherine Spencer was elected to this Cochrane position about nine months ago and her visit to the Czech Republic was her first official visit to one of the 120 existing Cochrane Centres and Groups in the world.

As part of Catherine Spencer's visit to the Czech Republic, she met with the Director of the Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic, Prof. Dusek, at the Ministry of Health in Prague, where they discussed with Dr. Klugar the important role of Cochrane in supporting the development of national guidelines (NG) and rapid recommendations (RR). Catherine Spencer did not hide her enthusiasm about the activity of the Czech Cochrane Centre, which methodically supports the development of NG and RR in the Czech Republic. In her opinion, this is an exemplary model of how the Cochrane Centre should work with health policy. She also expressed her support for the prospective publication of rapid reviews that would be used as a basis for rapid recommendations in the prestigious Cochrane Library.

Another topic of conversation was the consideration of using the conclusions of robust, independent, and high-quality Cochrane systematic reviews, which are always published together with the Plain Language Summaries, which are about 700 words in length and summarise all the significant outputs of the review. All meeting participants agreed that this unique form of Cochrane review outputs could be a useful resource for the NZIP.

During their visit to Prague, Catherine Spencer and Sabrina Khamisa also had the opportunity to see the venue of the next Global Evidence Summit in 2024 (GES 2024), which will be held from 9-13 September 2024 at the O2 Universum and organized by Dr. Klugar's team.  In their words, the venue visit exceeded their expectations.

On April 19, 2023, Cochrane Czech Republic had the opportunity to welcome Catherine Spencer, Cochrane Executive Director, and Sabrina Khamisa, a member of the Cochrane Central team, to the premises of the CEBHC-KT, IBA, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University in Brno, where the Cochrane Czech Republic is located.

The meeting was planned to deepen Cochrane cooperation, especially in the area of development of national guidelines and Cochrane systematic reviews, but also to strengthen and further expand activities within Cochrane Methodology Groups, where members of the Czech Cochrane Centre are involved. Dr. Klugar reviewed the activities of the Czech Cochrane Centre since its establishment and Cathrine Spencer presented the new Cochrane Development Strategy.

In the framework of this event and its preparation, Dr. Klugar not only as a host of the Summit, but also as the elected chair of the GES Scientific Council, meets regularly with Cathrine Spencer, but also with the leaders of the other main partners of the GES - JBI, Guidelines International Network, and Campbell Collaboration.