On March 3, 2021 BIREME completed 54 years since its foundation. The tag cloud, specially created to mark the date, brings together key current terms that reflect the results of the team’s work over more than five decades based on innovation and the state of the art in information management, scientific evidence, and communication in health in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Twenty-three years ago, the Latin American and Caribbean Health Information Network met and approved a new health information and knowledge management model, the VHL – the Virtual Health Library, idealized by Abel Packer, former director of BIREME/PAHO/WHO. The proposed model had a common objective: to provide visibility and broad access to scientific and technical knowledge in health of and for the countries of the Latin American and Caribbean Region, contributing to narrow the gap between evidence and practice.
Originally launched during CRICS10 in 2018, e-BlueInfo is an application available for Android and iOS that puts in the hands of health professionals reliable and up-to-date information selected by experts from Ministries of Health and educational and research institutions, as well as including PAHO/WHO guidelines and scientific evidence available in the VHL information sources.
Representatives of the Brazilian Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) met on March 16 to align and monitor actions related to Term of Cooperation 93 (TC93). The second term of adjustment (TA2) of the TC93 includes elements such as the promotion of scientific research and the dissemination of technological knowledge in health.
Until recently, it was challenging to find information about strategies, policies, and roadmaps on knowledge management, which bibliographic databases, consortiums provide access to health information as well as to learn the scientific productivity per country and territory in the Americas. This is now changing with the launch of the Profiles on Knowledge Management and Access to Health Information in the Americas, a landscape of documents, statistics, networks, and indexes related to health information in the Region.
The National Medical Sciences Information Center and the National Council of Scientific Health Societies held the VII National Workshop on Scientific Publication in Health Sciences, which aimed to discuss the implementation of models in favor of Open Science in Cuba. The event was attended by speakers from Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as PAHO and BIREME, one of its Specialized Centers.