Minervation

Minervation launches National Elf Service for mental health

Join-the-elvesToday we are announcing the launch of our National Elf Service, designed to help busy health and social care professionals easily stay up to date with today’s huge volumes of significant research developments in their fields, improve their knowledge, and reduce error. For entry-level users, the service is free.

The National Elf Service is the brainchild of our Founders André Tomlin and Douglas Badenoch, humorously branded with the idea of Elves who ‘dig and delve’ (1).  This service, where basic membership is free to users, is designed to benefit practitioners and patients alike by providing user-friendly updates on the most significant new evidence selected from today’s avalanche of high quality research.

Health and social care professionals are inundated with new evidence.  They can’t keep up to date, yet they are required to for professional development and audit purposes.

The National Elf Service tackles this problem in a unique way. Created by professionals for professionals, it summarises high quality new evidence that is relevant to practice using industry-standard appraisal criteria and an accessible and user-friendly front-end.

The service also features open and transparent discussion of the evidence, bringing together clinicians, patients and researchers.  And users can track their learning as they engage with the evidence using the service’s curated content and continuing professional development tools.

No other service works in this way.  The mantra is:

  • No bias
  • No misinformation
  • No spin
  • Just what you need!

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André is Member of the Month on the Patient Information Forum website

(This post appeared originally on the Patient Information Forum website)

I am Managing Director of Minervation and many of you will know me through my work on the PiF website.

My interests include evidence-based health care, web design, information science, usability testing, social media and blogging.

I live in Bristol and work from home and from the Minervation office, which is based in central Oxford.

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National Elf Service on the way

Since the demise of the NHS Specialist Collections, we have noticed that there is a real gap in the market for simple and usable evidence updates that help keep health and social care professionals up-to-date.

This kind of work is our bread and butter and has been for over a decade, so we have decided to launch a series of health evidence services in a number of subject areas, to bring the latest research, policy and guidance to the busy people who need it most.

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Mental health carers and confidentiality website wins IVCA award

Mental health professionals have to consider their primary responsibility to the patient as well as a careful assessment of the patient/carer relationship

We are proud to announce an award-winning interactive website to help mental health professionals manage issues of confidentiality and negotiate information sharing dilemmas with carers who support people with mental health problems.

We have built the site with colleagues at Rethink and Seefood.tv and were delighted to hear that it was awarded the 2010 IVCA Clarion Award for best interactive website.

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