News
Chinese health experts look at NHS knowledge management
30 April 2008
Health experts from the Chinese Health Economics Institute (CHEI) in
Beijing visited NHS institutions this month to learn about
state-of-the-art health information systems. The promising new
partnership between two major international health systems, set up with
support from the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, is also
an important step to growing and improving patient care in the NHS.
As part of the visit, Chinese health experts toured key NHS
facilities to learn more about knowledge management and sharing, both in
virtual and actual libraries.
Locations they visited included the NHS Institute offices — where
delegates saw the state-of-the-art National Library of Health (NLH) —
the Map of Medicine, the NLH Eyes and Vision Specialist Library and the
specialist ophthalmology library at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London.
Catherine Xiao from the Chinese Health Economics
Institute meets with the team from the National Library for Health at
the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement.
From L-R: Clare Honeybourne, Anne Weist, Caroline De Bruin, Catherine
Xiao, Ingrid Evans and Graham Bayliss
“The NHS is the most efficient, most egalitarian and most
comprehensive health system in the world, so understandably it is bound
to attract interest from large publicly funded healthcare systems in
other nations”, said Sir Muir Gray director of the NLH, who was recently
appointed to the role of technical consultant for the CHEI. “By sharing
facets of our world-class health system, and allowing doctors across the
world to share vital medical information, we can hope to improve patient
care not just in England, but internationally.”
Experts hope the partnership will encourage the sharing and use of
professional knowledge and quality research to develop and improve
health services for patients in both England and China.
"Techniques and tools for making information available to
practitioners are invaluable to a growing healthcare system," said
Catherine Xiao of the CHEI. "We hope to learn from the NHS in order to
use and apply their innovative library service to our own health system
in China."
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