Wednesday, May 16, 2012

 

About this site

 

The Knowledge Network is provided by the NHS Education for Scotland Knowledge Services Group. We provide a national strategic and policy framework, leadership, resources and tools, to widen access to knowledge and promote competence in its use, to help to improve Scotland’s health and healthcare.

 

 

Our Values

 

Everything we do and plan is based on the following seven principles:

 

  • Embedding knowledge in the skills, practice and culture of health and healthcare.
  • Empowering individuals and communities in maximising health and wellbeing.
  • Equity of access and support, and proactively addressing inequalities.
  • Working in partnership with organisations and colleagues in NHS and other sectors.
  • Quality assurance of all resources and services.
  • Applying and promoting standards for sharing of knowledge.
  • Continuously improving and reviewing our services.

 

 

 

The Knowledge Network

 

The Knowledge Network platform is the national knowledge management platform delivered by the Knowledge Services Group.

The Knowledge Network is a national online knowledge service for health and social care. It provides high quality knowledge support for delivery of health and social care.

The Knowledge Network provides:

 

  • A wealth of 12 million information and learning resources from more than 100 providers. These resources are brought together to search through one integrated access point - a kind of “Health and Social Services Google”. This includes collections of articles, books and journals, guidelines, policy documents, resources for patients and service users, evaluated websites and e-learning courses.
  • A personal webspace. You can select your own collections of content and features to create your own My Home page on The Knowledge Network. Here you can choose Quick Links and many other services. A Feeds Library allows you to choose newsfeeds to help you to keep up to date in your area of interest. The “What is here for me?” section allows you to choose collections of resources defined for different workforce groups and topics. My Resource Space also allows you to save and organize your personal collections of resources and to share them with others via email or tagging.
  • Online community tools, accessible through My Community Space, to help groups of health and social services staff and partners to work and learn together. They can create their own community websites and collaborative workspaces to share information and learning resources as well as personal knowledge and experience. My Community Space provides Web 2.0 tools including wikis, blogs, discussion forums, tagging and personal profiles.

 

 

 

Portals

 

The Knowledge Network platform also supports a wide range of Portals providing special collections of services and content focused on particular topics and audiences. Portals are available for:

 

  • Clinical practice and clinical topics – e.g. Evidence into Practice,
  • Clinical and non-clinical staff groups – e.g. Healthcare Managers.
  • Social Services staff - Social Services Knowledge Scotland www.ssks.org.uk has been developed in partnership with the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services – as a dedicated national knowledge service for the Social Services sector.

 

 

 

E-Learning

 

The Knowledge Network Learnign and CPD pages enables users to create, contribute, find and share e-learning resources. It enables distribution of learning objects across virtual learning environments and learning management systems.

 

 

Unified Library Management System

 

SHELCAT is the Scottish Health Libraries CATalogue. Health libraries across NHS Scotland and in the voluntary sector use uses software provided by NES Knowledge Services to enable users to access, borrow and request library resources via the Internet.

 

 

Health Information Partnerships

 

The Knowledge Services Group provides a portfolio of information-sharing technology tools which enable information services in health, social services and voluntary sectors to share information and learning resources across organisations. These information-sharing tools have created the large database of 12 million plus items of content which sits behind The Knowledge Network. Partner organisations can use these tools to create online knowledge services tailored to meet the needs of their own audiences – for example, the Social Services Knowledge Scotland and Health Management Online portals. More information about these tools is available at http://www.healthinformationonline.scot.nhs.uk

A programme of outreach to Public and Further Education libraries, the voluntary sector and other community information points aims to help staff in these services to promote access to health information in the community for both health and social services staff and service users.

 

 

Information Literacy

 

Information literacy comprises the generic transferable skills, values and attitudes required to define an information need, find, evaluate and share information. Information literacy is essential to lifelong learning, evidence-based practice and shared decision-making between patients and professionals in a mutual NHS. The Knowledge Services Group has developed an information literacy framework defining a model for information literacy, outlining core capabilities and promoting its benefits. A new information literacy portal contains training materials, courses and other documents helping the user to get to grips with information literacy.

The Knowledge Services Group is also supporting development of the Knowledge Worker role as an intrinsic part of the existing roles of staff in health, social services and partner sectors. This covers the skills, behaviours and values involved in finding and sharing information in partnership with patients.

 

 

Shared Space and Community Builder Toolkit

 

The Shared Space service and Community Builder Toolkit are accessed through the My Community Space tab in The Knowledge Network. The Shared Space tool enables communities of people with a common interest or area of practice to create a password-protected community website where they can share resources, experience and expertise. The tool comes with a range of facilities including an announcements service, discussion forum, uploading of documents and a contacts directory.

The Community Builder Toolkit has similar aims to the Shared Space, but enables groups to easily create open community websites which do not require password protection. It offers modern Web 2.0 tools including wikis, blogs and tagging.

 

 

Strategic Development

 

The Scottish Government eHealth Directorate has commissioned NES to lead the development of a coordinated national strategy for knowledge services. This strategy aims to bring together both Special and geographic Boards and partners in the social services and voluntary sectors in a coherent, consistent and collaborative framework to manage knowledge to support all stages of the patient journey and all aspects of the patient experience. Enabling Partnerships: Sharing Knowledge for a Mutual NHS describes a National Health Knowledge Network of organisations working together to define and implement their own knowledge management strategies that support their own organizational priorities and stakeholder needs. These organisations will use a shared infrastructure of information content, technology and skills to support members of the public, patients and professionals in finding information and in developing the skills and confidence to use it effectively.

 

Further information from: Dr Ann Wales, Programme Director for Knowledge Management, ann.wales@nes.scot.nhs.uk