Seek and you will find: Microsoft’s CUI programme launches NHS Medical Search tools

NHS staff have many sources of information at their disposal, but they can be hard to find and difficult to access in busy offices and wards. Microsoft’s Common User Interface programme has been addressing the problem through its NHS Medical Search project.

This has just launched a set of tools that will enable front-line staff to search for medical terms and information through software applications that they use every day.


The difficulty of finding reliable and up to date sources of information to check medical terms or answer queries will be familiar to many medical secretaries. And it is something that Microsoft has been working on in close collaboration with the NHS. 

Microsoft and NHS Medical Search

Microsoft has an Enterprise Agreement with NHS Connecting for Health that is designed to make it easier for trusts to buy its software. “There is no shortage of information and advice for NHS staff, but they don’t always integrate well into people’s working lives.”

As part of the deal, it is running a £50 million Common User Interface programme. This is a series of projects that are looking for ways to make it easier for trusts to roll out technology and to make it easier for NHS staff to use.

One of the projects is NHS Medical Search, which has developed a set of electronic tools to bring the National Library for Health and other online resources onto computer desktops and into applications like Microsoft Word that staff already use.

“There is no shortage of information and advice for NHS staff, but they don’t always integrate well into people’s working lives,” says Carl Nolan, head of the NHS Medical Search project.

“They will be in print or on websites, so people may not know about them, or they will have to stop what they are doing to go and find them. The idea of this project is to bring things together and make them much more readily available.”

Libraries and formularies

The project has been working with the National Library for Health, British National Formulary and Medicines.org.uk. The NLH is a vast collection of reviews and guidelines, databases of articles and books, patient leaflets and specialist resources on everything from cancer to women’s health. “The idea of this project is to bring things together and make them much more readily available.”

The BNF is published by the British Medical Association and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain and aims to provide clear, concise and accessible information about medicines. And Medicines.org.uk provides simple and accessible medicines information services.

The tools created by the NHS Medical Search project are designed to give NHS staff easy access to everything held in these resources and, eventually, others as well.

If a medical secretary, for example, uses one of the tools to search for a medical term, she will get back a list of articles, book reviews and other entries held by the NLH, BNF and Medicines.org.uk. She can be confident that the information comes from an NHS source, and is completely up to date.

“We saw an opportunity in the widespread use of Microsoft products in the NHS,” says Sir Muir Gray, director of clinical knowledge, process and safety at NHS Connecting for Health, which is responsible for the NLH and its website.

“Lots of people use Microsoft applications, and now we can use them to take the knowledge we have collected to where people are.”

The Office research pane

The NHS Medical Search project has developed three tools to do this. The first uses a feature of Microsoft Office called the research task pane. An augmented version has been developed for the NHS that allows people to use it to search the library and formularies while using Microsoft Office applications, such as Word.

“At the moment, if you generate a Word document, and you type in a medical term, you will see a red squiggle, a spelling query, appear under it,” says Mr Nolan.

“If you download this tool, and generate the same Word document, you will still get a red squiggle – but if you right click on it with your mouse, the research pane will open up and take you to these resources where you can find out more.” "'I have a pile of books beside me, and we often Google things,' says Patricia Walker, a medical secretary at the Trevor Mann baby unit at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton."

The medical search deskbar

The second tool that has been developed is a deskbar application that can be downloaded onto a Windows desktop (the start up screen for any computer running an operating system such as Windows XP or Windows Vista).

This allows people to search the same library and formularies but without starting up a particular software application. “We think this will be particularly useful for downloading and printing: perhaps for generating leaflets to give to patients,” says Mr Nolan.

The SharePoint feature

The newest tool to be developed is a feature for SharePoint, which is Microsoft’s web-based collaboration platform. This is increasingly being used in the NHS to allow trust staff or particular teams to share information and exchange documents securely. "The NHS Medical Search team hopes to develop more tools – including a Vista gadget to sit on a Vista desktop – and to bring in more resources over time."

“Many trusts now have portals, so we have created a SharePoint feature that can be dropped into that kind of collaboration space,” says Mr Nolan. “It gives people access to all our resources within the SharePoint space.”

Only a download away

The NHS Medical Search team hopes to develop more tools – including a Vista gadget to sit on a Vista desktop – and to bring in more resources over time. However, its immediate aim is to get more people using what has been developed so far.

It has launched a website - www.medicalresearchservices.nhs.uk – that has more information about the project and its work, including demonstrators of the different tools.

Medical secretaries and other NHS staff who are allowed to download new applications from the web will be able to download the research pane and the medical search deskbar from the site (access to which is restricted to uses of the NHS’ N3 network).

Those who aren’t will be able to email their IT department with the information they need to do the job for them. There will also be access to the SharePoint feature, which only IT administrators can download.

Ms Walker is enthusiastic about the idea of the new tools. “A big issue at the moment is communication,” she says. “I am sure more people would use the NLH, if they knew it was there.

“Some of the results that come back would not be useful to a medical secretary – I don’t think I would ever need access to the Cochrane Library [which is part of the NLH], but that would be brilliant for our consultants.

“However, it would be fantastically useful for me to have this kind of access to the BNF for Children and the medical dictionary. It would be quicker, safer and take away the vagary of using a search engine.”

Further Reading

Find out more about NHS Medical Search and the new tools available (Please remember that access is restricted to users of the NHS’ N3 network).

Find out more about NHS CUI

Acknowledgement

This article first appeared in the magazine of the Association of Medical Secretaries, Practice Managers, Administrators and Receptionists (AMSPAR). You can find out more via the AMSPAR website.