National Electronic Library for Health
The Government's Information Strategy of the Department of Health, published in late 1998 as Information for Health, announced the setting up of the NeLH, with a mission to provide easy access to best current knowledge to improve health and health care, clinical practice, and patient choice. It is expected to be launched this spring.
NeLH will: (a) be obsessed with the quality of knowledge; (b) provide both knowledge and the know-how to manage and apply that knowledge; (c) be equally open to patients and clinicians; (d) be based on hypertext, with links to audio and video resources.
The NeLH offers an opportunity for linking information for the public to information for clinicians and managers. Its first target is to provide access to best current knowledge for clinicians within 15 seconds!
It will be organised in four main sections or floors: (a) guidelines and audit to provide a more systematic approach to care; (b) knowledge; (c) information for patients; (d) knowledge management skills and resources, with a front end, or Atrium, offering help to people who wish to use the resources and providing virtual "cafes" for online communities of users.
The first floor (guidelines and audit) will be the responsibility of NICE, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. The second floor (knowledge) will employ staff in R&D to develop a "hallmarking" system, providing users with clear and simple methods for appraising the quality of the knowledge available. There will be different subsets of the NeLH for groups of users e.g. NeLH for Mental Health, Cancer, Child Health, Women's Health. The third floor (patient information) will be the responsibility of the Centre for Health Information Quality.
A strong thread through the development programme is the emphasis on the role of well-trained librarians. NeLH is designed to complement and enhance existing library services, not replace them.
As the first stage of development of the NeLH, Hudson Rivers Management and Training Consultants, at the behest of RLG, undertook a series of scoping study visits around Britain during February. The purpose of the visits was to identify existing projects of relevance, expertise, centres of excellence, opportunities for partnership with individuals and organisations, and to review relevant IT provision.
The Scottish visit, by Keith Bonson of Hudson Rivers, was held on February 16th at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. The extremely tight timeframe for the production of the report precluded more widespread visits to libraries and information centres, but a number of SHINE members participated in the discussions in the afternoon (Alison Aiton, James Beaton, Margaret Forrest, Enid Forsyth, Richard German, Alison McIntosh, and Ann Wales).
Among the resources and initiatives highlighted were the SLIC report Enabling access to the knowledge base of healthcare, SHOW (Scottish Health on the Web) at www.show.scot.nhs.uk, GHI (Glasgow Health Information) at www.show.scot.nhs.uk/ghi), SHINE itself, the Glasgow Royal Infirmary site at www.grilib.demon.co.uk, Glasgow Area Drug Information at www.digri.demon.co.uk, GRHIN in Grampian, Surfdoctors in Fife, Lothian web site for primary care, and HEBSWeb at www.hebs.scot.nhs.uk. Attention was drawn to the recent awarding of a Charter Mark to HEBS, which could serve as a model for other public information services in the health sector.
The draft report, gathering together information from the scoping visits around Britain, will be sent to the Steering Group for discussion on April 12th. It is indeed an exciting time to be working in the health information sector!
Richard German
Maria Henderson Library