‘‘ H
ELEN works for Health Education England (HEE), the organisation which currently has system leadership
responsibility for NHS knowledge and library services in England, via its Knowledge for Healthcare strategic framework (
www.hee.nhs.uk/ our-work/knowledge-for-healthcare). Helen’s small team leads the Knowledge for Healthcare ‘resource discovery’ work- stream, which is about optimising health- care staff access to digital knowledge and evidence. HEE funds a national collection of resources for the whole workforce, and is working to provide a coherent delivery and discovery infrastructure which also surfaces resources purchased locally by NHS trusts. In January 2022, HEE launched the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub. This uses the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) and holdings manager, together with Third Iron’s LibKey, to provide a single search interface with enhanced linking to full-text, including from other search interfaces which healthcare staff may use. Meanwhile, the team is also leading a phased transition from over 90 local library management systems (LMS) to eight regional LMS, variously supplied by Axiell, OCLC and PTFS Europe. They also provide a national service desk offer- ing support to all users of NHS-funded resources and systems.
As part of the latest NHS restructure, in April 2023 HEE is set to become part of the national body called NHS England, taking this role, remit and work with it.
What makes the NHS in England so complicated?
“In a nutshell,” says Helen, “the very large
We are very fortunate to enjoy good partnerships
with those suppliers who have been willing to take on the challenge of working with us.
The challenge of buying for the NHS in England
Helen Bingham, Head of Knowledge and Library Services (Resource Discovery) at Health Education England, discusses how to enjoy good working relationships with suppliers who are able to rise to the challenge of the complexity.
number of separate organisations which make up the NHS and the very wide range of user needs and preferences. Every organisation independently manages its IT and information governance, which can mean that there are a lot of hoops to jump. “To compound things, the majority of digital knowledge resources are purchased locally, with HEE’s national investment accounting for just 30 per cent of the total spend. This means that the same resources are purchased many, many times over, and time which could be spent locally on cus- tomer-facing knowledge support is instead spent on procurement and management of resources. It also means we need to main- tain a very granular discovery infrastruc- ture which must cater not only for the local variation in access, but also continuous organisational change.
“The ‘one-stop’ Knowledge Hub actually comprises 262 instances, and there are currently 380 OpenAthens entities in the NHS in England structure – with frequent requests for change as organisations merge or new ones are created. The latest challenge is to accommodate the 44 new Integrated Care Systems across England.”
Current priorities Helen says: “With the contracts for the current national collection resources ending in March 2024, work is underway to plan and procure a new collection. Colleagues at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) are key partners in this endeavour, as they have specialist pro- curement expertise in this area (they also provide and manage the NICE Framework (
https://bit.ly/3H7IyFF) which any NHS organi- sation may use to purchase books, journals and databases).”
Helen Bingham.
More work will also be done to continue to enhance and streamline the discovery and delivery infrastructure. Helen says: “We are pleased with the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub and enhanced full text link- ing – but some aspects of some user journeys are still not ideal. We are also working with Third Iron on a way to help library staff to more quickly source and supply documents requested by service users.”
LMS progress
Although 60 per cent of NHS library services now participate in an HEE-fund- ed regionally shared LMS, more are keen to join. Helen says: “Each regional LMS implementation is a significant change programme. LMS are obviously critical to day-to-day delivery of library services, and whilst there is much similarity between NHS library services, there are differences to accommodate too.
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