Helping doctors put patients first : an innovative service from health libraries

The lay public’s interest in health topics is growing continuously. Thus the media devote ample space to articles on health, medicine and welfare. However journalists are less specialized then in the past and a major difficulty for them is the selection of facts from scientific literature to be translated into newsitems. We have designed an alerting service for general practitioners on health from news published in the press, to enable doctors to get closer to their patients, grasp their approach to medicine and whenever necessary correct it. The supply of the service through e-m ail messages is simple, inexpensive and not greatly time consuming. The project was suggested as an innovative and interesting addition to the portfolio of products and services of health and hospital libraries.