The North Shore - Long Island Jewish Health System seeks to create and evaluate an electronic medical library that is universally accessible to staff everywhere throughout its 18 owned, sponsored and affiliated hospitals. It seeks a three-year grant from the National Library of Medicine Information System Grant Program to share access to strategically selected electronic resources among its nine owned and five sponsored hospitals, via both on-site and remote access. Together at a centralized access point with free web-based electronic educational resources (including those provided by the National Library of Medicine), these proprietary resources will be the inception of a Unified Electronic Medical Library for clinicians. The Health System also seeks such a grant to explore the potential to expand this project to its four-affiliate hospitals - Peninsula Hospital Center in Far Rockaway, and Southampton Hospital, Central Suffolk Hospital and Eastern Long Island Hospital on Long Island's """"""""East End."""""""" The following may serve as objectives for the project: 1) To create a collectivized, """"""""virtual library"""""""" of web based resources among the staff at the Health System's 14 owned or sponsored hospitals, as selected by focus groups or interviews formed for a system-wide needs assessment. 2) To explore the potential and lay the groundwork for expanding this project to the Health System's four affiliate hospitals. 3) To foster evidence-based healthcare (EBHC) in the hospitals where the project is implemented, so that clinicians rely on the most current and relevant clinical information available (the """"""""best evidence""""""""), rather than relying only on their own experience, collegial advice or the smaller range of literature that would be available in the absence of the UEML. 4) To track resource utilization by two groups across the Health System, in comparison with baseline information yielded by a comprehensive needs assessment: a) Clinicians with close physical proximity to a larger medical library, and b) Clinicians without such close proximity. 5) To determine whether, how and to what extent utilization will increase for group b), which previously had limited access to the greater resources available at a tertiary-care hospital.
