CILIP/SCONUL/RLUK Health Strategy Group

Notes/Actions of meeting at SCONUL on 14 February 2013

Present: Chris Fowler (CF) (chair); Betsy Anagnostelis (AB); Ruth Carlyle (RC); Brian Clifford (BC); Guy Daines (GD); Elizabeth Newbold (EN); Andrea Place (AP); David Stewart (DS)

Apologies: Ann Rossiter

  1. Notes from meeting on 30 October4 2013 – Approved Notes of meeting
  2. Actions arising:

HSG Work Programme for 2013 – Agreed to invite Society of Chief Librarians to be a member of SCL on the basis that attendance at HSG meetings/events will be on a self-funding basis

  1. Shape of Training Consultation

Noted text of HSG response to the consultation. Also noted the difficulty in responding because of poor response software – agreed that the need for an effective response platform should for part of HSG response to the Depart of Health Digital Strategy (see item 5)

  1. HSG Annual report

Noted draft text prepared by the Chair. Agreed that the report should cover both 2011/12 and 2012/13 (ending in March 2013). Members of HSG would send comments to CF about the value of the Group and CF would prepare a new version by the end of April.

  1. Department of Health Digital Strategy

Noted that there were many areas of the Strategy on which HSG and its members had an interest including:

  • Development of virtual networks for internal DH teams and key stakeholders – this is of interest to SHALL especially
  • The use of social media by DH and the healthcare system generally
  • The development of the new Integrated Customer Service Platform (replacing NHS Direct and NHS Choices)
  • Developing an active community of digital professionals
  • Managing consultations within a digital environment

Agreed that Ruth Carlyle, with support from David Stewart and Guy Daines, would draft a letter to Rachel Neaman (Departmental Digital Leader at DH) setting out HSG areas of interest in the Digital Strategy and inviting Rachel Neaman to an HSG meeting. It was felt important to offer contacts and ideas that would support development of the Digital Strategy at any future meeting with Rachel Neamanand also to see where DH stood with the Knowledge Council and the Information Matters programme within Government.

  1. LSBU Research into Health Literacy

Noted publication of this evidence base on levels of health literacy published by the London South Bank University. In discussion it was felt that the Library and Information community needed to be aware of the wide variety of health literacy levels that existed and look at the relationship between health information literacy to information literacy. Agreed that this would be a good topic to explore in greater detail in future and that some form of toolkit on health literacy focused on the library and information community would be useful.

  1. Health Strategy Group pages on SCONUL Website

It was noted that the existing HSG pages on the SCONUL website were in a poor state with no referral from the Home Page, no breadcrumb trails and a number of broken links. Agreed CF would discuss web pages with Ann Rossiter and who had editorial rights as it was important to improve and develop the HSG web presence. GD noted that the new CILIP website would be launched at the end of March/start of April and that there should be an HSG page there with links to the main pages on the SCONUL website.

  1. Updates from Members

Members have provided brief update notes which are provided in the Annex to these minutes.

  1. Any Other Business

Social Care Information Exchange - Changes were taking place at SCIE and it was probably best to await their outcome before approaching them again

Finch Report and NHS - Responses to this agenda taking place at a local level although the LETBs were trying to coordinate this nationally

Academic Health Service Networks (AHSN) - the Networks would be different to existing AHSCs (Academic Health Services Centres) as they would be regional in nature, and based on one academic centre in partnership with many local Trusts. Each AHSN would have a budget of £10 million and 1.5 staff.

Health Education England – Our Strategic Intent – HEE have published document setting out their strategic priorities and are inviting comments (but with no published deadline date). Agreed that it would be good for HSG to do joint response with SHALL – noted that Kim Wilshaw would be new Chair of SHALL from April 2013

Information Standard – Notedthat the current Information Standard was likely to be extended from April to November but also the concerns that some current participants in the existing Information Standard had left. A new scheme would be needed by the launch of the Customer Services Integrated Platform in the autumn, with the hope that it would be attractive to more information providers including NHS Trusts

  1. Date of Next Meetings

Agreed next meetings as:

9 July 2013 (CILIP)

14 November 2013(SCONUL)

Annex A – Update reports from HSG Members

CILIP

  • Governance Review – Proposals are likely to be made to the CILIP AGM in the Autumn. The likelihood was that most existing Committees would be abolished although joint committees would be looked at on a case by case basis. It was important for HSG to show good value and effectiveness.
  • Future Skills Project – having just launched the Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB) CILIP Council will shortly be considering proposals relating to the future of professional and vocational qualifications. Important contracts would shortly be made by CILIP – one relating to delivering the new accreditation system (possibly two contractors to carry pout accreditation) and the other some market research into future role of CILIP in CPD provision.
  • Information Literacy – this is a policy priority area for CILIP, and healthcare is an important exemplar area for its importance. CILIP has recently undertaken a quick survey of how information literacy is regarded by CILIP members outside the formal learning sector and results will be published in April Update. A closer look by HSG at the LSBU evidence on health literacy would be a useful input from a CILIP perspective.
  • Final advert for the CILIP Umbrella conference in Manchester (2-3 July 2013) with strong information literacy and information management pathways

Health Libraries Group (CILIP)

Our purpose is to establish and maintain a ‘core member offer’ and for this to be based on:

  • HLG membership being seen as an essential part of professional life for those working in health information
  • The provision of an evolving and regularly reviewed range of high quality service and activities
  • That we actively ensure that the ‘core member offer’ is available to the maximum number of people who can benefit from it
  • That the group is run in the best way possible in relation to governance, financial management, service development, customer service and records management.

In 2013 we will focus on 5 key areas:

  1. Committee Structure - review the committee structure to ensure it enables us to maintain and develop our core offer to members
  2. ICT - work with CILIP on the development of a new website and other ICT services such as Communicator and the VLE
  3. Publications - further improve the quality and readership of our journal and newsletter
  4. CPD - plan for our 2014 conference, run a number of CPD events, have a presence at Umbrella 2013 and provide a wider range of CPD services for members
  5. Records Management - conduct a discrete piece of work to ensure our records management/archive processes are the best they can be

Strategic Health Library Leads Group (SHALL)

  • Local Education & Training Boards (LETBs): the thirteen LETBs are currently going through authorisation.
  • Health Education England (HEE): Chris Welch, Director of Education & Quality has made it clear that he sees library and knowledge services as part of his directorate’s responsibility. He hasn’t allocated LKS to anyone in his team. Kim Wilshaw, SHA library lead for Yorkshire & Humber is briefing him and he may be happy with that arrangement. SHALL has some anxiety about what may happen to library lead roles in East of England and East Midlands.
  • Public Health England (PHE): Anne Brice and AnhTranh continue to lead PHE’s active knowledge management work stream. Expectation is that there will be some guidance on LKS for public health teams within local authorities.
  • NHS Commissioning Board (NHSCB): SHALL members continue to try to identify key staff to discuss LKS issues. Louise Goswami is the SHALL lead for this area. The lead for the NHSCB website has recently been identified and SHALL will be contacting her.
  • NICE: SHALL has completed a value proposition paper for its relationship with NICE and there are plans for a joint meeting to discuss strategic next steps. SHALL is also working closely with NICE on the reprocurement of national electronic content. New contracts need to be in place for 1st January 2014. NICE will become a Non-Departmental Public Body on 1st April 2013 and this will mean it won’t have “NHS” branding.
  • Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE): there are changes at SCIE. DS was not sure of the exact details but will provide an update before the next meeting.