Objectives Knowledge Translation (KT) is a dynamic and interactive process that includes the synthesis and dissemination of knowledge to improve health, the first task of Cochrane Fields.

Evidence is considered scarce in the world of Rehabilitation and this has a great impact at political, organisational and consumer levels. The main European stakeholders of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine (PRM), the medical specialty dealing with rehabilitation, called European PRM Bodies, started an effort that gave rise to Cochrane Rehabilitation with the scope to improve evidence production and related KT in this area.

Cochrane Rehabilitation, in collaboration with the European PRM Bodies, has recently decided to engage in the production of an e-book including all relevant Cochrane Systematic Reviews (CSR) in order to facilitate the dissemination of evidence to all the different audiences described in the Cochrane KT Strategy.

The aim of this work is to describe this KT effort.

Method An editorial group has been set up. To offer a systematic and comprehensible reading, the e-book will have an index and each CSR would be related to one or more indexed topics. Each CSR will be presented with the original abstracts and plain language summary, plus 4 different summaries directed to convey the evidence to 4 different audiences (clinicians, students, policy makers and consumers). The e-book summaries will be initially produced by trainees in PRM of an Italian University and revised by the e-book editors, to be finally approved and released by the European PRM Bodies.

Results A first draft of the e-book was created, which will have to be approved by the European Bodies. A pilot was performed and guidelines to facilitate the summaries production were defined. The clinical summary is meant for all clinicians and health professionals and should highlight the main results of the CSR. The educational summary is meant for medical or other health professional students, reinforcing all basic concepts. The political summary is addressed to policy decision makers and rehabilitation administrators; the text should be very concise and simple to understand. The consumer summary is meant for patients and caregivers and should be written in a clear and simple language as to explain to a patient his/her clinical condition and possible treatments.

Conclusions The e-book project is an important part of the Cochrane Rehabilitation KT Strategy as it would be a useful product to: 1. inform all rehabilitation health professionals on existing evidence; 2. educate students to achieve updated knowledge and learn how to select the best sources of scientific information, learning from the actual best evidence; 3. support political actions toward policymakers, consumers and other stakeholders to effectively organise service delivery, allocate resources, and allow persons experiencing disability to benefit from the best available rehabilitation interventions; and 4. identify unmet needs of evidence synthesis and prioritise Cochrane future work.