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NHS knowledge and library services
HEE leads on the strategic development of NHS knowledge and library services. The national NHS knowledge and library services team at HEE is responsible for procuring core digital knowledge resources on behalf of the health and care workforce and trainees.

National Health Service (England) has 177 autonomous library services largely based in acute hospitals, but also in mental health and community health services. These deliver knowledge services to trainees and staff. In large cities, particularly in London, a small number of universities offer knowledge services to NHS staff as well as to students.

In 1997, national guidance on NHS library and information services observed duplication and lack of co-ordination, partly arising from complex funding arrangements. Health Service Guideline HSG (97) 47 concentrated on enabling equitable access to the knowledge base for all healthcare professionals irrespective of their discipline, by requiring the development of multi-professional library and information services. It required that each Hospital Trust in England draw up a library and information strategy.

A digital library service for the NHS in England called the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH) was launched in 1998, later becoming the National Library for Health (NLH). Management of this service was transferred to NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in 2008.

In 2012, organisational changes saw the transfer of the regional leads responsible for NHS libraries, and their budgets, into HEE, for the first time bringing all of them together within a single organisation.

Knowledge for Healthcare
Envisaged as a fifteen-year programme of work, the first five-year strategy, “Knowledge for Healthcare: a development framework 2015-2020” was published in December 2014. A programme manager was appointed for one year following publication to establish a programme and project management infrastructure through which the work could be effectively progressed and reviewed. Following successes, the regional teams were formed into a single national team and the decision was made to appoint a national lead. The programme manager is now a full-time and permanent post, and the postholder is responsible for leading and sustaining a coherent national approach.

Through 2019-20, the HEE reviewed their strategy. The Carter review of operational productivity and performance in English NHS Acute hospitals in 2016 signalled the need for greater use of evidence and data to engage business managers and clinical leaders.[Varela] The Long-Term plan, published in 2019, spoke of the “strong scientific tradition of evidence-based decisions about care” and the need for ready access to decision support. It featured several workstreams, including mobilising evidence and organizational knowledge; patients, carers and the public; resource discovery; quality and impact; and workforce planning and development. The second five-year strategy was published in January 2021.

HEE’s aim in developing and continuing to publish iterations of the national strategy for NHS knowledge and library services is to:


 * Set direction, articulate a clear ambition and establish priorities
 * Invite key stakeholders to partner work with us in order “to transform and optimise healthcare library and knowledge services, harness new technologies, and champion service development and re-configuration”
 * Guide investment decisions, nationally and locally, including in relation to commitment to developing new information products
 * Encourage the spread and adoption of best practice and ‘new’ models of service delivery, bringing evidence closer to teams and to decision-making

HEE during the COVID-19 pandemic
The national HEE team supported the wider NHS system during the COVID-19 pandemic. HEE launched a bank of Coronavirus literature searches and a collection of COVID-19 current awareness bulletins, with users recognising that: “They are willing to share the work they are doing with other services in the NHS and recognising that in many cases this only needs to happen once.”