THE CILIP-backed campaign to promote evidence-based decision -making throughout the NHS in -England has won backing from a series of -senior and influential -figures.

The campaign, which is run in ¬partnership with Health Education ¬England (HEE), was launched in 2016 to highlight the value that library and knowledge professionals in the health service have a positive impact on outcomes by helping find the best evidence for clinicians and managers. When it was launched, around one million decisions were made every 24 hours across the NHS – now it stands at around one million every 17 hours.

The NHS is celebrating its 70th ¬anniversary this year and CILIP members, staff and ¬senior HEE library leads ¬attended the NHS Confed 2018, which took place in June, to spread the ¬message about ¬#AMillionDecisions to NHS ¬senior ¬managers and gain ¬support and buy-in for the services ¬offered by NHS library and information ¬professionals. ¬¬¬David Stewart, CILIP Vice-President and ¬Regional ¬Director of Health Library and Knowledge Services North, said: “Our aim was to help visitors consider how they can optimise the expertise of these ¬specialist services to ¬ensure that research evidence, and also staff ¬know-how, are used to shape the transformation of the NHS towards NHS80.”

The campaign highlights a number of examples where information services have had positive impacts on patient care, medical best practice, and budgets. Among the examples are promoting the use of vitamin D to aid the recovery of patients in intensive care and identifying savings of ￡500,000 in the procurement of nursing supplies at one NHS trust.

Sue Lacey-Bryant, Senior Advisor: Knowledge for Healthcare at Health ¬Education England emphasised that “The #AMillionDecisions campaign is -allowing us to engage the most senior of decision ¬makers. By partnering to reach out to ¬senior NHS leaders at NHS Confederation, we are able to showcase both the professionalism of health librarians and knowledge specialists and the business-critical contribution that we make to healthcare.”

Over 70 senior figures pledged to ¬support the #AMillionDecisions ¬campaign and more NHS staff made contact about how they could better utilise ¬library and knowledge services. Louise Goswami, Head of Library and Knowledge ¬Services and Technology ¬Enhanced Learning, HEE, working across London & Kent, Surrey and Sussex, said: “Each ¬conversation was a fresh ¬opportunity to advocate for our services and we will be following these up over the next weeks and months”.