Effective Use of Health Care Information: : A Review of Recent Research

Citation

Urquhart, C. (1998), "Effective Use of Health Care Information: : A Review of Recent Research", Library Management, Vol. 19 No. 5, pp. 343-344. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.1998.19.5.343.4

This review assesses the significance of recent UK health information research projects, many of which have been funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre (BLRIC). It is not simply a compilation of BLRIC research, as the findings are considered in relation to other health care research and local and national policy initiatives. Chapter topics include national information services, government policy initiatives and projects, the role of specialist health and medical library and information services, drug information, audit of health libraries, impact analysis of health information services and services for particular user groups.

Information about health care is of interest to us all and this overview provides a fascinating account of the variety of research that has been undertaken. There are certainly fashions in health information research and many of the research projects have a strong development flavour. Categorising the projects neatly is an almost impossible task as many of the areas of interest overlap. The choice of chapter headings reflects the audiences that might read the book and topics are cross‐referenced satisfactorily. The index is comprehensive.

Those not working in specialist health information services might find Chapter 1 (on locally available health care information) personally interesting. Many of the projects for patient and community information seem to appear from nowhere, presumably the result of some enthusiastic individual or group commitment. The sporadic nature of these projects contrasts with nationally funded initiatives such as the OMNI gateway for health and biomedical information on the Internet (aimed primarily at higher education and research). Many initiatives are now aimed at empowering consumers and patients, so that the general public can be truly well informed about health choices. Chapter 5 (on drugs and prescribing) details some more specific drug information developments. Chapter 6 describes some more projects of interest to the public library sector, as it considers health promotion, care in the community and rural health initiatives.

Information professionals in the health care sector are under the same pressures to demonstrate accountability as their health professional users are. Chapter 7 surveys the role of information services in supporting clinical audit and how health libraries themselves might approach audit of their services. Much of the emphasis in health care policy and research is now on evidence‐based practice, selecting treatments on the basis of the basis of the best research evidence available. Evidence‐based medicine places new demands on health information services. Services have been developed, and the health librarian of the twenty‐first century will be expected to have skills of critical appraisal. Projects such as Value and EVINCE (studying doctors and nurses, respectively) demonstrated that information services can act as catalysts in changing clinical practice, and the findings also demonstrated the rich complexity of information need and use among health professionals. Various techniques have been used to map information need and use, and Chapter 8 (on the influence of information services on clinical practice) includes these alongside description of the clinical effectiveness initiatives, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and the Value project.

Activity in North America cannot be neglected as the National Library of Medicine has spearheaded many of the developments and research initiatives in medical literature and information retrieval on which health professionals and health librarians throughout the world depend. Chapter 12 outlines activity in North America, and Chapter 13 outlines European initiatives.

For health information professionals this book is a must. It is an extremely comprehensive, and well written review, and I certainly found much of interest about projects I knew little about. For those working in the public library sector there are plenty of pointers to ways in which the public library sector might develop initiatives which fit in with the need for better health information for consumers and patients. For those working in the academic sector (in the widest sense) the book sets challenges rather than solutions. The health libraries which support health professionals in undergraduate and continuing education, need to prepare those professionals for the “well‐informed” patient with access to the Internet, and actively support health professionals and managers in evidence‐based care. This will require more co‐operation across sectors than is apparent from the scope or findings of recent research. Much of the research seems to have been opportunistic, understandably so given the way policies are developed and funded. Unfortunately this rather haphazard approach neither provides a basis for detailed evaluation of programme interventions, nor the evidence for the direction and format of service development. Some of the groundwork is in place but much remains to be done by both health information practitioner and researcher.