Worth looking at...

As previously posted the new NHS Evidence portal went live on Thursday 30th April.

You can find it at www.evidence.nhs.uk and we recommend you give it a try.

So what will you find there? Drawn from the site:

• A fast, comprehensive search function for clinical and non-clinical information
• Access to a resource collating information on new drugs to support commissioners
• A new NHS Evidence portal homepage
• Links to resources previously part of the National Library for Health.

The search tool offers you the means to carry out the kind of search you might do on a well known search engine but against a selection of high quality resources. You can enter one or more words, use "quotes marks" to search for a phrase and should get lightning fast results in return. There is a good help page.

Once you have some results there a special filters to help you narrow your search down. Or you can just add another search term in the box above your results.

The results are relevance ranked by default to promote high quality evidence and guidance to the top of the page. You should find good results in the first ten hits.

You won't find journal articles in NHS Evidence (apart from where they are included in one of the old Specialist Libraries - now known as the Specialist Collections). If you want to search the journals the system is unchanged with the A-Z MyJournals for browsing or Health Care Databases Advanced Search to carry out literature reviews. The National Library for Health website remains available for the time being (in a fetching new shade of blue).

We will be offering more information on getting the best out of NHS Evidence in the near future. In the mean time if you get confused, stuck or excited about the changes - please get in touch.

(C) Image Creative Commons