On November 24-25, 2016, in Geneva, in the global meeting of WHO Regional Office Libraries, including PAHO/WHO, BIREME established a new phase of collaboration focused on the Global Index Medicus (GIM): the leadership of the project to strengthen GIM and renew its website, promoting dissemination of scientific and technical output from the low- and mid-income countries. The global actions with WHO will be focused in 2017.
Research has been considered one of the six basic activities of PAHO/WHO, and its use has been crucial to fulfill the Organization roles, as an essential component to aim at equity and health. BIREME’s actions at PAHO/WHO Health Research Policy are aligned with the Center’s primary mission to contribute with the Region to democratize the access, publication and use of information, knowledge and scientific evidence. Moreover, they are one of the pillars to achieve the Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.
VHL Brazil, a product from the cooperation among the Ministry of Health, BIREME/PAHO/WHO and Brazilian teaching and research institutions, is the main resource to democratize open access to information in health, assuring representativeness of Brazilian scientific and technical knowledge. However, the future requires advances with new information products and services, with the challenge of translating them into unformal language to facilitate scientific research and search for evidence, policy-making, and social control.
The Evidence-Based Health Portal (PSBE) is an initiative of the Secretaria de Gestão do Trabalho e da Educação na Saúde of the Brazilian Ministry of Health aimed at incorporating practice based on evidence in the work process of health professionals and scholars. With the objective to strengthening the Portal, BIREME developed an efficient metasearch engine to search and retrieve information registered in databases.
The Caribbean Public Health Agency – CARPHA, jointly with BIREME/PAHO/WHO, and the Faculty of Medical Sciences at the University of the West Indies developed the CARPHA EvIDeNCe Portal in order to make published literature and grey literature readily available and accessible to support decision-making in the Caribbean Region.
In 2016, BIREME/PAHO/WHO celebrated its 49th anniversary as reference institution in the processes of promoting, strengthening and expanding the flow of scientific and technical information in health in Latin America and the Caribbean, in a close cooperation with over two thousand institutions in the Region. Under the direction of Dr Diego González Machín, since July 2016, the Center has extensively worked with PAHO/WHO headquarters and its technical areas, with PAHO Country Offices and with WHO headquarters and its Regional Offices to fulfill and advance its mission.