Publisert  av Redaksjonen, Helsebiblioteket.no

The Norwegian Electronic Health Library (Helsebiblioteket.no) is a publicly funded online knowledge service for healthcare professionals and students in Norway.

Foto: Magne NylennaFoto: Magne Nylenna
Prof. Magne Nylenna MD is editor-in-chief for the Norwegian Electronic Health Library (Helsebiblioteket.no).Foto: Folkehelseinstituttet

The Norwegian Electronic Health Library is accessed online through the website www.helsebiblioteket.no.

The library provides free access to point-of-care tools, guidelines, systematic reviews, scientific journals and a wide variety of other full-text resources.

Free access to clinical resources

Through the library, everyone in Norway has unrestricted access to BMJ Best Practice and UpToDate, as well as the drug database Micromedex, the Cochrane Library, Guidelines International Network (G-I-N) and major medical journals such as the Annals of Internal Medicine, British Medical Journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. Through McMaster PLUS, one can subscribe to updates and search the current best evidence research, with citations from over 120 leading clinical journals and selected evidence-based resources.

By logging in, healthcare professionals and students also have free access to bibliographic databases such as CINAHL, MEDLINE and PyscINFO, and 2,500 full-text journals.

Wide range of content

There are topic libraries for pharmaceuticals, mental health, public health, quality assurance and toxicology, plus content collections for other specialties and professions such as nurses, primary care and prison health. There are more than 400 Norwegian clinical guidelines, scoring tools and patient information leaflets.

The search function allows for bilingual searches in the Norwegian and English information sources. 

Publicly funded 

The library was officially launched in 2006 by the Minister of Health and Care Services and now operates within the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The service is publicly funded through the national budget.

Staffed by a team that includes health professionals and librarians, the library has editorial independence with separate regulations. Advice about strategy and budgets is given by a council that represents the funding bodies, while advice about editorial matters is given by an editorial board that represents users and stakeholders.

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