Infosalut: The knowledge management tool of the Public Health System of the Balearic Islands

Abstract

Introduction: Infosalut (http://www.infosalut.com) is a new service from the Virtual Health Sciences Library of the Balearic Islands (Bibliosalut). Its aim is to spread amongst the professionals of the public health system of the Balearic Islands the information generated by the system itself, and to give visibility to the work of the organization. Methods: Infosalut started with the creation of a website to promote and give visibility to the information generated by the Public Health System of the Balearic Islands. This is divided into two major sections: news and training agenda, and also has a section that collects all the daily information about the official worldwide health days. This new website was created with Joomla content management system, with a multilingual (Spanish and Catalan) and journalistic template with a mobile version that responds to the needs of the content presentation. From there, the library team produced manuals and procedures on how to collect and manage the susceptible information to appear in Infosalut. At the same time, the Bibliosalut team designed a system to disseminate the Infosalut contents. The result was the creation of Infosalut profiles in the most important social networks and a subscription newsletter. Results: The result is a web portal that manages the institution information, through a news section, classified into thematic categories, which are subdivided into: training, research and innovation, health management, public health, pharmacy and scholarship grants and awards. There is also, a training agenda, where we have included all the interesting activities for the public health system professionals in the Balearic Islands. However, the best result is the integration of the virtual library into the institution through a direct collaboration with users and those responsible for the different institution services, who publish their news on Infosalut. Conclusions: Infosalut is a broadcasting and communication channel, which uses the best technology and design available, and is extremely useful for all the workers in the Public Health System of the Balearic Islands. The work done by Bibliosalut librarians in creating and maintaining this new service demonstrates their great ability to innovate and respond to the information needs of the institution they serve, as well as the easy integration and the collaboration work with the users. In conclusion, this experience readily shows how the librarian can add value to the institution information management.