Health Library News

 The excellent search engine NICE Evidence Search is being decommissioned 31st March 2022. You will not be able to use this resource after this date. Reference to NICE Evidence Search has been removed from the Health Library website. Alternative resources you might like to consider are: TRIP NHS Knowledge and Library Hub You can find links to these resources as well as additional help on our NHS Resources page .

 We have been notified by NICE that they will be closing their NICE Evidence Search search engine. Notice from NICE " NICE is focused on delivering the developments described in the  published five-year strategy . The board and senior management team are giving priority and focus to work that will drive this forward and have made decisions to provide resources to deliver this. They have taken account of the wide range of services that NICE currently provides and are making difficult decisions to prioritise our future work programmes. At the same time, use of the service has been declining over the years, and has dropped by 24% over the last 21 months." The NICE Evidence Search resource has been a very useful resource for NHS staff and healthcare students and we are sorry to see it go. Users can try the new NHS Knowledge and Library Hub for simple searches - you'll find a link on our NHS Resources page .

We are led to believe that the problems users have been experiencing over the past week, trying to access NHS Athens resources, have now been resolved. If you have any problems accessing our online resources please report it via the technical support form or contact Cheryl , the eresources librarian.

There appear to be on-going problems accessing NHS-subscribed resources using NHS Athens usernames / passwords. Access seems to be patchy and is affecting access to databases, ejournals and ebooks. We have informed both NICE (main supplier of databases) and Eduserv / Athens. Please report any problems that you are having so that we can escalate the issue.

NICE Evidence Search is a healthcare specialist search engine. It will allow you to search across a wide range of accredited resources that have been approved by NICE Evidence. Thus you can be confident that the results you find will be of good quality. The results screen includes topic guides, if available, as well as your search results. You can also use the filters to focus your results more. Filters include: Area of interest Types of information Type of Clinical Query Sources Medicines & Devices Published Date Screen-shot of results from a simple search The results will often link to the full-text. This search engine does not search across journals for primary research. You can find out how to use NICE Evidence Search by watching our short video .

Information from NHS Evidence: " ... NHS Evidence will also be undergoing some stepped changes. From 1 April the web portal will become known as ‘Evidence S earch’ and will carry the NICE logo in place of the NHS logo. However, the URL www.evidence.nhs.uk will remain the same.  We will be incorporating Evidence Search, BNF, a refreshed CKS service and our Journals and Database together as a collection of core evidence products under the new heading of NICE Evidence Services. Changes to explanatory text within the site will be made to reflect these changes which will begin to be made from 1 April." This may affect NHS Athens users accessing these products.  

Following the update of the software managing the NHS Evidence databases and ejournals interfaces there have been a number of data errors. This has resulted in errors in the holdings listed for our ejournals presented via the NHS Evidence My Journals list and the NHS Evidence HDAS databases. I have been correcting the entries for the titles that the Health Library subscribe to. There are also errors in the NHS Core Content collection although NHS Evidence have informed us that it is unknown when these will be updated. If you have any problems accessing our ejournal titles please report them to the eResources Librarian . We apologise for any problems this may cause.

NHS Evidence will be carrying out essential maintenance on the NHS databases (HDAS) and journal systems during Monday 3rd December 2012. Thus the NHS healthcare databases advanced search (HDAS) and NHS My Journals list will be unavailable between 5:00 and 10:00 pm. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Message from NHS Evidence regarding access to the NHS databases and journals: " The suppliers of our full text link resolver service are conducting essential maintenance between the hours of 2am and 8am EDT (5am and 11am UK time) on Sunday, 4th November. During this period collection administration and full text links in HDAS search results may not be available. We wish to apologise for any inconvenience.."

Following the implementation of a software upgrade earlier this month we are experiencing a few problems with the NHS My Journals list . Unfortunately this is affecting the search options within the interface as well as our list of available journal titles. We have reported the problems to our suppliers and hope to have the issues corrected soon. In the meantime if anyone has problems accessing our ejournal titles please can you report this to the eresources librarian . Apologies for any problems this may be causing.

NHS Evidence recently published the following Evidence Updates : Improving outcomes in head and neck cancers (May 2012) focuses on a summary of selected new evidence relevant to NICE cancer services guidance ‘Improving outcomes in head and neck cancers’ (2004). Familial breast cancer (May 2012) focuses on a summary of selected new evidence relevant to NICE clinical guideline 41 ‘The classification and care of women at risk of familial breast cancer in primary, secondary and tertiary care’ (2006). Sedation in children and young people (May 2012) focuses on a summary of selected new evidence relevant to NICE clinical guideline 112 ‘Sedation for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in children and young people’ (2010). Constipation in children and young people (June 2012) focuses on a summary of selected new evidence relevant to NICE clinical guideline 99 ‘Diagnosis and management of idiopathic childhood constipation in primary and secondary care’ (2010).

Athens / Eduserv are carrying out maintenance between 07:00am and 9:00am Tuesday 31st July. There may be temporary disruption affecting login and admin functions. NHS Evidence are carrying out maintenance between 5:00pm and 6:00pm on Tuesday 31st July. The NHS Evidence website (including HDAS and My Journals etc) will not be available for some time during this maintenance window. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

NHS Evidence are experiencing problems with the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search facility today. It is preventing some users from logging in and running searches against a different database than that selected for some users. We have reported the problem and NHS Evidence are working to fix it. Apologies for all the inconvenience caused.

The interface to NHS Evidence Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS) has been updated. The new features of HDAS include: Clearer screen designs and styles Advanced search – search screen Improved thesaurus layout and functions Advanced search – search preview Access the database from our Healthcare Resources page using your NHS Athens username and password. You can get help using the new interface from our updated online guide or book on a training course to get the most out of your searching.

From NHS Evidence: "Please note the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS) site will be unavailable from 17:00 today (29 May) until 09.00 on 30 May when the new site goes live. This period of downtime is necessary to upload the new databases onto our systems." You should still be able to access the baseline resources eg medline and Cinahl via Ebsco etc. You can find a list of all the resources on your My Athens page. Go to the Journals and databases page , under the NHS Athens section sign in with your NHS Athens username and password, and page down to the My Athens Resources section.

NHS Evidence are reporting that there are currently ongoing errors when using the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS) databases. This includes problems with alerts and saving results. You can report any problems directly via their Contact Us form . Apologies for the inconvenience caused.

NHS Evidence are currently reporting that the HDAS facility is experiencing problems with searches run against the Embase database. This will affect NHS Athens users running literature searches against this database. Apologies for the inconvenience caused.

Message from NHS Evidence regarding NHS access to Zetoc: “NHS Evidence access to Zetoc will stop on the 31 March 2012 due to a change in the terms and conditions for access to Zetoc which the NHS cannot comply with. NHS Athens users will lose access to Zetoc from 1 April 2012 onwards .   A message to this effect will be placed beside the ZETOC link at https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/nhs-evidence-content/journals-and-databases . We apologise for this unanticipated loss in service due to factors beyond our control. NHS Evidence are continuing to explore all possible options for future access to Zetoc.”

The NHS Evidence site will be undergoing maintenance between 5pm and 6pm on Tuesday 7th February 2012. Apologies for any inconvenience caused during this time. This may affect access to the search facilities as well as journals and databases.

Incorrect notes about access are appearing on the ejournal entries on the NHS Evidence My Journals list. The error has been reported and we hope a correction will be available soon. The note refers to access via IP address only however many of the titles where the note is appearing are accessible via NHS Athens such as the main platforms like Wiley and Springer. Apologies for any confusion caused.