The NHS Research and Development Programme and its impact on health care library and information resource centres

This paper looks at the likely impact of the NHS research and development (R & D) programme on health care library and information centres. A brief description of the NHS R&D programme stresses the importance of the management of research and development findings to its success. This paper identifies a number of obstacles to the successful dissemination of R&D findings and discusses the role of health care libraries and information centres in overcoming some of these. It focuses on the essential contribution they can make in supporting the use of systematic reviews as the main source of quality evidence on the effectiveness of health care interventions.