Putting trusted evidence and knowledge at the fingertips of the NHS

Healthcare is a knowledge intensive industry. NHS knowledge and library services are for everyone who works in the NHS, for clinicians and non-clinical staff and for educators and learners. They support the whole system toward a better, faster, more efficient and globally-competitive NHS.

HEE provides BMJ Best Practice as the national clinical decision support tool for NHS staff and trainees online and by app. Nearly 4 million views since January 2022.

Your gateway to evidence, knowledge and local library services is online! Accessible via NHS OpenAthens, the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub has been used to find over 300,000 items  since January 2022.

We offer e-learning for staff and trainees, introducing tools to mobilise knowledge, and modules on literature searching and health literacy. These have been launched over 51,000 times to date.

To help identify local priorities, we provide geodata which shows data by individual local authorities indicating the percentage of people aged 16-64 with low levels of health literacy.

We worked with people with lived experience to produce two, new, easy read guides for people with learning disabilities and autism about health choices and questions to ask, for people with learning disabilities.

A key part of our role is to develop and enhance the skills of health knowledge and library staff. The NHS Knowledge for Healthcare Learning Academy offers high quality, accredited, HEE funded,  professional development opportunities for this specialist workforce in the digital age.