National Library for Health links up Athens sign on
- 2 October 2007
The NHS National Library for Health has boosted its user friendliness by incorporating a modified version of the access and identity management service, Athens, into the library’s website.
As part of the new agreement, over 257,000 NHS staff and placement students in England will be able to access full-text journals, key clinical databases and eBooks on the service, signing in just the once using Athens log-in details from the National Library for Health front page.
Users will need to log onto Athens to access bibliographic resources, full text journal and local resources.
The NLH portal uses Athens data to identify users’ organisational affiliations, enabling searches across all of the resources that they are entitled to access. The mission of the National Library for Health (NLH) is to help patients and professionals use best current knowledge in decision-making.
Ian McKinnell, technical manager at National Library for Health, said: “To enable the better use of evidence and enable improvements in safer health care, it is vital that NHS managers and clinicians have ready and reliable access to knowledge. Establishing a knowledge sign-on is a vital foundation to this objective.”
Athens will allow the portal to save the searches and settings of individual users, so every time users log on to the portal with their Athens username and password, the portal customises itself according to their preferences.
Ed Zedlewski, CIO and deputy CEO at Eduserv, developers of Athens, told E-Health Insider: “We have been working with the NHS for 10 years providing them with a range of services. We are a big force in the education market and a lot of doctors and nurses teach in local universities so we are confident our product will be appreciated in the NHS.
“Helping NHS professionals across England to access thousands of online resources at the click of a mouse is a demonstration of Eduserv’s charitable mission to use its technological expertise to support research and learning. Using this latest version of Athens, it will be more convenient for staff to get important information they need as quickly as possible.”
The library consists of the national digital knowledge base – a single source of knowledge catalogued, classified and organised so that it is not only easy to find but can be delivered through the media that are now available, for example digital laboratory reports, and e-prescriptions.
On a more local basis, there are 1,275 librarians who know the local communities, and their needs and priorities and can further filter information for individuals.
Zedlewski added: “This latest version includes interfaces for personalisation, offering staff a service that suits them to a higher degree than ever before. What should be noticeable is better accessibility to content and easier usability of the service.
“The MyAthens portal will provide them with access to content in a personalised way so that the user has relevant material content presented to them to select immediately upon log in. This is a significant development for both the NHS and Eduserv.”
Eduserv is a not-for-profit, professional IT services group who provide Athens to the NHS and universities across the UK.
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