Anew partnership between NHS Direct and the Clinical Knowledge Summaries Service (CKS) will allow GPs and other healthcare professionals to access to patient information from their computers.
The service is part of the National Library for health (NLH) and principally utilises secondary research, evidence from standard NHS resources such as NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) and a range of peer-reviewed systematic reviews.
Until recently patient information on the website has been provided by an external supplier and paid for by the Department of Health. The previous provider’s contract expired at the end of March this year and NHS Direct Online was approached in late February with the view to providing the patient information content to CKS.
Sir Muir Gray, NHS chief knowledge officer, acknowledged the benefits that this pioneering new partnership between the two services will bring to patients and healthcare professionals: “Two NHS organisations such as NHS Direct and the CKS, which come together to share knowledge and expertise is a realisation of a long ambition and I’m delighted that it is now happening.”
NHS Direct Online, already a successful website providing health information and advice will provide content to CKS from its health encyclopaedia and common health questions with a view to expand on this in the future. Helen Young, clinical director for NHS Direct said: “Our Online service is already extremely popular with patients, receiving 1.5 million visits every month and this is an excellent opportunity for us to make our high quality, health information available to even more people via their health professional.”
