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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New responsive design for the Oxford Careers website

Student meeting Careers AdvisorWe have been working with the team at the University of Oxford Careers Service for a few years now; helping them ensure that their website meets the needs of the students, alumni and recruiters who use it.

Last year, the team noticed that more and more people were becoming interested in accessing the site on smartphones and tablet computers. They also felt that the site wasn’t really making the most of blogging or social media tools, and that the design and structure of the site could be improved.

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Download André’s talk on social media, Cochrane reviews and the National Elf Service

The Mental ElfAndré was invited to give a talk at the UK Cochrane Centre 17th Annual Contributors Meeting in Loughborough on 20th March 2012.

It was an interactive session that explored the accessibility and usability of Cochrane systematic reviews and considered how the findings of these reviews could be more clearly communicated to health professionals and the general public.  André introduced the workshop participants to blogging and social media and also gave a brief overview of the soon to be launched National Elf Service.

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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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