What is the Academic Health Sciences Library’s Role In The Learning Health Care System?

From a Guest Post on the NLM by Musings on the Mezzanine Blog by Philip Walker, MLIS, MSHI, Director of the Annette & Irwin Eskind Biomedical Library, Vanderbilt University:

I was introduced to the concept of the learning health system or learning health care system last year, but when the topic came up again at a recent lecture, I felt compelled to know more. My basic search across Medline (PubMed), CINAHL, Embase, and Engineering Village yielded over 10,000 results [before deduplication], including both conceptual and research articles from various clinical specialties and informatics. However, a quick scan of the titles and abstracts uncovered little to no mention of the role of the health sciences or (bio)medical library in the learning health system (LHS).
That got me thinking: what might that role be?
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Generally speaking, the learning health system can be described as a fusion of clinical and basic sciences, informatics/data sciences, and workplace culture, with the goal of continually improving the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care. Or, as one colleague eloquently stated, “The learning health system helps us improve how we care for patients while we are taking care of them.’

Read the Complete Post by Philip Walker

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