Gerald Gartlehner

Gerald Gartlehner is a leading expert in evidence-based medicine and evidence synthesis methodology who has helped lead the RTI International-University of North Carolina Evidence-based Practice Center. He is a highly published expert with more than 20 years of experience, serves on various academic boards, and teaches collegiate courses at European universities.

 Dr. Gartlehner focuses his energies on projects that advance the field of evidence synthesis. His main professional interests concern comparative effectiveness and safety of medications, rapid evidence synthesis, and the use of artificial intelligence for evidence synthesis. As a co-convenor of the Cochrane Artificial Intelligence Methods Group, he works at the forefront of innovations in the automation of evidence synthesis. He was also the first to address persistent methodological problems of single-reviewer abstract screening through crowdsourcing.

Dr. Gartlehner also serves as a consultant for the World Health Organization, the Austrian Ministry of Health, and the German Robert Koch Institute. He participates in international method groups, including the Cochrane Rapid Reviews Method Group and the GRADE (Grading of Recommendation Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) Working Group.

He has extensive experience in academia. Dr. Gartlehner teaches at Université Paris Cité, France, and Austria’s Landsteiner University for Heath Science. He is a full professor and chair of the Department for Evidence-based Medicine and Evaluation at the University for Continuing Education in Krems, Austria.

Dr. Gartlehner serves as the associate director of the RTI International-University of North Carolina Evidence-based Practice Center (RTI-UNC EPC). This position and his role as director of Cochrane Austria resulted in his leadership and participation in multiple comparative effectiveness reviews. The topics were on prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of various conditions. 

Dr. Gartlehner joined RTI in 2011. His expertise in evidence-based medicine and synthesis methodology led him to publish more than 300 peer-reviewed publications. Clarivate Web of Science ranked Dr. Gartlehner continuously in the top 1% of highly cited researchers since 2020.