News
BNF available via NHS Medical Research Service
15 May 2008
The BNF (British National Formulary) and the BNF for Children are now
available via the NHS Medical Research Service (MRS), which provides
online clinical information sources for healthcare staff in the NHS.
The BNF is a joint publication of the British Medical Association and
the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain that provides
information about the selection and clinical use of medicines for
healthcare professionals.
This initiative forms one of the projects within the Common User
Interface (CUI) programme, a joint programme of projects between NHS
Connecting for Health (CFH) and Microsoft.
The MRS is available to all NHS staff and consists of three main
tools—the Deskbar Search and Research Pane (which can be used directly
within the MS Office environment), and the Sharepoint Feature (which
allows web-based access to the service).
In addition, there is a website (www.medicalresearchservices.nhs.uk)
that can be accessed over the N3 NHS network, which explains the
different tools and their features, allows users to try them out safely
prior to installing them, and helps them with downloading and installing
the tools to their computers in a simple non-technical way.
One of the challenges faced by NHS staff is the amount of information
available to them from numerous sources in print and online. MRS
addresses this by integrating all the available information and making
it much more readily accessible.
Dominic Vaughan, BNF Publishing Director said: “The BNF and the BNF
for Children are unique sources of authoritative information for all
those involved in prescribing, monitoring, supplying and administering
medicines within the NHS. We welcome this innovative project which
provides this information on the desktop for NHS staff and ensures a key
information resource is available to prescribers wherever they might
need it.”
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