The technical cooperation project established between BIREME and the National Council of Health Secretaries (CONASS) for the development of actions related to the management of information and knowledge in public health, was implemented in a period of 12 months, surpassing the expected results and contributing to increase the visibility, access and use of technical, scientific and dissemination publications of CONASS in the context of the Virtual Health Library (VHL).
The project’s lines of action contributed to integrate CONASS in the Brazil VHL Network, to index the publications of the Council and State Health Secretariats into the LILACS and ColecionaSUS databases, and to make the VHL research service available to users in CONASS’s Digital Library.
Besides the results achieved, some figures and facts show the impact of cooperation and open up perspectives for continuity.
- Technical, scientific publications and other information content were recorded in the integrated information source management system (FI-Admin), in three databases that became part of the VHL information source collection: CONASS (1,164 records ); State Health Secretariat of Rio de Janeiro – SES/RJ (205 records); and Goias State Health Secretariat – SES/GO (39 records).
- Training activities and technical and methodological support for the CONASS and SES/RJ and SES/GO teams, on the selection and indexing process of non-conventional publications in the VHL databases, facilitating access to this type of information that, in general, do not enter the scientific communication flow.
Another fact that shows the project’s positive impact is the number of visits to the CONASS Digital Library website. Comparing the last two years (2018 and 2019), in 2019 there was an increase in the number of users (7%), new users (8%) and access sessions (6%). This is an indicator that we are on the right path and justifies the maintenance and permanent updating of the Digital Library and its information sources, as well as the inclusion of other State Health Departments in this initiative.
Veronica Abdala, Information Sources Manager at BIREME, reaffirms her statement at the beginning of the project: “the moment is for resuming a collaboration that has been going on for a long time and that is fundamental for information and knowledge to permeate the decisions of health managers in Brazil, contributing to the development of a culture of using evidence.” Furthermore, it is a project that is fully aligned with CONASS’s mission: to articulate, represent and support the State Health Secretariats, within the scope of the Unified Health System (SUS), to promote the dissemination of information, the production and dissemination of knowledge, innovation and promoting the exchange of experiences.
Expanding the scope of the BIREME and CONASS cooperation project
In the context of this project, it is worth mentioning the Rio de Janeiro State Health Secretariat (SES-RJ), which through the Research Coordination of the Secretariat for Education and Innovation in Health (CPES / SUBEDUC), it was possible to integrate its research institutes in the VHL: Paulo Niemeyer State Brain Institute (IECPN), Arthur de Siqueira Hematology Institute (HEMORIO), Luiz Capriglione State Diabetes and Endocrinology Institute (IEDE) and the Aloysio de Castro State Institute of Cardiology (IECAC). About 16 professionals from these institutes and from SES-RJ participated at training activities and are collaborating to index their publications.
The initiative was so well accepted and adopted by SES/RJ and gave rise to a proposal to implement the Virtual Library VHL SES/RJ as an institutional framework for research activities. The VHL SES/RJ will enable the creation of its own collection and access from a single location to the scientific and technical output of SES/RJ. According to Viviane Araújo, CPES/SUBEDUC coordinator, “besides facilitating the search for documents produced by SES/RJ and its Units, the registration of documents in the VHL SES/RJ allows documents produced in different administrations to be registered, ensuring the Secretariat’s memory”.
The search service has its own interface and URL for CONASS and is available in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French: https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/conass/
Responsive version for mobile interfaces:
