Guide to NeLH - The National electronic Library for Health

About NeLH

The National electronic Library for Health (NeLH) is a national Web based information resource, for NHS staff, patients and the public. NeLH provides access to a range of high quality information resources to support better patient care and a healthy lifestyle.

The Role of NeLH

The role of the NeLH is to provide health care professionals with the knowledge and know-how to support health care related decisions.

The Content of NeLH

The NeLH policy is to complement and supplement NHS libraries that provide books and journals and access to databases such as MEDLINE or CINAHL. The three main types of information found on NeLH, are knowledge, know-how and resources.

Searching for know how

CLIP Database one of the Medendium E-Guidelines resources.  This resource provides titles and summaries of clinical improvement and audit projects developed by NHS Trusts.

Commission for Health Improvement (CHI) was set up by the government to improve the quality of patient care.  CHI carry out clinical governance reviews of every NHS Trust every four years.  Details relating to these reviews can be found on this website.  Details of investigations of serious service failures can also be found here.

Health Care Needs Assessment An e-book that looks at incidence and prevalence, health service effectiveness, and baseline services (triangulation) of major diseases or health service specialties.  

Maternity (MIDIRS) provides information on maternity issues.  There are consumer information leaflets and evidence based information leaflets for professionals, links to other maternity sites, what's in the news and a calendar of events relevant to midwives and consumers.

National Patient Safety Agency is an Special Health Authority created in July 2001 to co-ordinate the efforts of the entire country to report, and more importantly to learn from, adverse events occurring in the NHS.

National Service Frameworks Zones
National Service Frameworks set national standards and define service models for a specific service or care group. NSF's available: Cancer, Paediatric Intensive Care, Mental Health, Coronary Heart Disease, National Cancer Plan, and Older People.  Preparation for NSF's on Diabetes, Renal Services, Children’s Services, and  Long Term Conditions. There will usually be only one new topic a year. Includes a Guide to implementing the NSFs in Primary Care.

NeLH Guidelines Finder
The database currently holds details of over 450 UK national guidelines with links to Internet downloadable versions of the guidelines where available. There are links to SIGN, Prodigy, MGP eGuidelines (for primary and shared care), Duodecim Primary Care EBM Guidelines, Public Health Laboratory Service - Advice and Guidelines, NICE Guidance, NICE Technology appraisals. Links to international sites include: New Zealand Guidelines Group - Guidelines Library, US National Guidelines Clearing House, Australian National Health and Medical Research Council: Clinical Practice Guidelines, Canadian Medical Association - Infobase: Clinical Pracice Guidelines.

NHS Modernisation Agency supports good practice in the NHS and links to the NHS Beacon Programme and the NHS Awards.  Delivers service improvement and links to the Changing Workforce Programme (new ways of working), Clinical Governance Support Team, National Patients Access Team and the National Primary Care Development Team.  Supports leadership development with links to training schemes.

NICE Guidance and Guidelines

NICE Guidance covers both individual health technologies (including medicines, medical devices, diagnostic techniques, and procedures) and the clinical management of specific conditions.

NICE Guidelines are produced to help health professionals and patients make the right decisions about health care in specific clinical circumstances.

Nice Audit Principles provides two documents 1)principles of best practice in clinical audit and 2)review of the evidence on clinical audit

Protocols and Care Pathways

NeLH Care Pathways Database Providing details of over 2,000 care pathways currently in use or under development in over 200 NHS organisations.

Care Pathways Know-How Zone provides guidance, resources and literature references on best practice for designing, developing and implementing integrated care pathways

Patient Group Directions (Approved Group Protocols) Library also known as Approved Group Protocols, specify rules for the permitted supply and administration of medicines in local NHS organizations other than by means of a prescription.

Searching for knowledge

Anatomy - 3D anatomical images, pictures and links to other image resources on the web

Bandolier - is a print and Internet journal about health care, using evidence-based medicine techniques to provide advice about particular treatments or diseases for healthcare professionals and consumers.

OMNI Reviewed Internet Resources - providing links to evaluated, quality Internet resources in the health care.

The British National Formulary - giving authoritative and practical information on the selection and clinical use of medicines.

Clinical Evidence - a database of clinical questions designed to help clinicians make evidence-based medicine part of their everyday practice.

The Cochrane Library - a database containing systematic reviews and other information that will assist in making diagnostic, treatment and other health care decisions.

DIPEx - on the DIPEx site you can watch video clips, listen to the voices or read the accounts of people relating their experiences of illness and the impact it had on their lives.

Evidence Based on Call - developed by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and the University of Oxford, this website contains over 800 critically appraised topics.

HTA Publications - Government commissioned reports that appraise the evidence on methods used by those working in health services to promote health, prevent and treat disease and improve rehabilitation and long-term care.

Medline/Pubmed - a service of the National Library of Medicine, this database provides access to 11 million+ citations from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. 

NHS Cost and Effectiveness Reviews  - incorporates:

NHS Economic Evaluation Database - providing comparisons of 2 or more treatment or care alternatives. These include cost-benefit analysis, cost-utility analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis. 

DARE - A database of quality-assessed reviews of effectiveness of treatment.

Effectiveness Health Care Bulletins - A bi-monthly bulletin examining the effectiveness of a variety of healthcare interventions.

Research Findings Register - a database of research findings that emerge from completed projects funded by the Department of Health, including the NHS Executive.

ZETOC - the British Library’s Electronic Table of Contents database provides access to the table of contents of over 20,000 scientific journals and 16,000 conference proceedings published per year.

Searching for resources

Virtual Branch Libraries - giving specialised information in: Cancer - Child Health - Communicable Diseases - Diabetes - Diagnostics - Emergency Care -  Health Informatics - Health Management - Heart Diseases - Knowledge Management - Learning Disabilities - Mental Health - Palliative Care - Primary Care - Public Health - Rare Diseases - Screening

Professional Portals - Providing information on: Frameworks and Guidelines, Evidence Based Materials, Reviewed Internet Resources, Virtual Branch Libraries (see the above) and NeLH Resource Centres. Professional portals are available for the following: Community Practitioner - Dietitian - Midwife - Nurse - Occupational Therapist - Orthoptist - PALS - Physiotherapist – Podiatrist - Radiographer - Speech Therapist

Reference Section - Providing information on: Anatomy - The Coronary Heart Disease Zone - Dictionaries & Internet Searching - Freeing the Medical Literature - Knowledge Management -  Medicines - Telemedicine - Quality and Clinical Governance

Medical dictionaries

Search for a term or terms across several medical dictionaries and receive a list of links to definitions.

Welcome

Includes links to local NHS libraries and details about the NeLH website.

What's new

What's new on the NeLH website.

Hitting the headlines

Providing rapid and reliable analysis of the evidence behind selected news reports. Staff at the NHSCRD have been commissioned by NeLH to locate and systematically examine the evidence behind the headlines.

Focus on... Bandolier

Bandolier has been commissioned by NeLH to provide two regular features on the NeLH site: -

• Regular detailed essays surveying the evidence on important topics.

• 'Snippets': thought-provoking short features on that state of the evidence on a topic to encourage debate.

Document of the week

Provides information about new documents (new books and new websites) as they are produced.