Better health found in new e-library

Your doctor will never set foot inside this library. Researchers and health-care students will never rifle through its stacks of scholarly papers.

But that’s just fine with the people and organizations behind this collection of more than 14 million articles and abstracts, which is improving care for patients by bringing the most up-to-date knowledge to health professionals by way of their computers.

It’s the Electronic Heath Library of B.C. (eHLbc for short), which is finding a growing number of enthusiastic fans across the province, as health-care providers, students and clinical researchers applaud the results of a two-year project to make access to leading health science journals and publications as close as their nearest computer terminal.

The data portal provides access to over 9,300 journals, about 1,500 full-text journals, and 360,000 records relating to evidence-based reviews in areas such as medicine, psychology, psychiatry, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pre-clinical sciences.

The library improves care for patients by providing doctors, psychologists, nurses and other health-care professionals with the most up-to-date knowledge on topics like diagnostic and treatment protocols, enhancing evidence-based patient care and providing information on the latest technologies.

“This has been a great partnership between the Ministry of Health, the health authorities, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, universities and colleges,” said Health Minister George Abbott during the library’s launch. “This is going to be a great help to administrators, to clinicians, to students, and particularly to patients.”

Championed by health librarians in B.C.’s post-secondary and health-care systems and by the B.C. Academic Health Council, the library quickly came to life after an injection of $300,000 from the Ministry of Health.

The steering committee for the library, reporting to the Academic Health Council, includes representation from the six health authorities, 24 public post-secondary institutions, three provincial ministries (Health, Children and Family Development, and Advanced Education) and the College of Physicians & Surgeons of British Columbia. Nancy Levesque, director of library and information services at Thompson Rivers University, co-chairs the committee.

“The Electronic Health Library of B.C. is a cost-effective and efficient service delivery model," Levesque said. "In B.C., our health-care professionals now have access to expand, evidence-based research resources.”

Theresa Prior, president of the Health Libraries Association of B.C., noted that health librarians have been working for the last decade to provide equal access to timely, quality information for all health-care professionals across the province, often a challenging task away from larger centres.

Since the project was inaugurated this spring, other professionals – including social and child protection workers, and even veterinarians – have expressed interest in using the library.

Other groups realizing the benefits of the service include students and graduates moving into practice in rural and remote communities. Through the library, they are able to enjoy the same access as practitioners in major centres, a vital tool in their professional development.