VHL 10 years!
Ten years ago, on March 27, 1998, the proposal for the Virtual Health Library was publicly launched in Costa Rica, with the "Declaration of San Jose towards the Virtual Health Library", and it was designed based on the commitment and calling upon for cooperative construction, aimed to strengthen the capacities, infrastructures and efforts in order to enable "the broadest access to information for permanent improvement of health of our people".
The VHL, as a model, strategy and milestone of technical cooperation work among institutions and individuals, represents a notable innovation that has systematically grown over the past ten years, enhancing the contemporary management of information, knowledge and scientific evidence in research, education and healthcare systems in Latin American and Caribbean countries, according to the social, economic and cultural conditions of the region and integrated in the international flow of scientific information.
The VHL is a collective, dynamic and permanent construction. It takes place in a modus operandi among institutions and individuals who are producers, intermediaries and users of information, which promotes, fosters and performs networking and convergence in the production and interoperation of sources and flows of information. Inn addition, these sources and flows of information comprise information products, services and events.
Over two thousand institutions of Latin America and the Caribbean directly or indirectly operate information products and services at the VHL. By adopting the modus operandi of networking and convergence, the VHL definitely contributes to creating scale, critical mass and references that increase and sustain the capacities and infrastructures of information and scientific communication in these countries.
This modus operandi configures the VHL as a common and public virtual space of scientific and technical information and communication, which is carried out online through the Web. The VHL sources of information differ from others in the web due to its character of scientific, technical and factual information operated by common patterns and quality control.
As a public library, the VHL supports open and universal access to information, scientific knowledge and the best evidences. This democratization of information and scientific knowledge is crucial to progressively increase the capacity to act and make decision in collective and individual health, with more efficiency, efficacy and quality which adheres as a critical and permanent intervention and one of the main social determinants of health related to improving healthcare services, leading to change in lifestyle and aiming to overcome inequities. Therefore, contextualizing information and scientific knowledge is a priority in the history of the VHL, by developing local information flows and learning and informed environments.
The VHL interoperates and contributes to advancing sister and complementary networks of information, knowledge and scientific education in Latin America and the Caribbean, with an emphasis on the networks SciELO, CVSP and ScienTI. All together, these networks operate more than ten thousand accesses per month.
At international level, the VHL certainly contributes to the development of and interoperation with global and thematic networks coordinated by the WHO, such as the networks Global Health Library, ePORTUGUÊSe, EVIPNET and TropIKA.net. This advance and expansion of impact of the VHL represents a south-south cooperation mode in an area that is strategic for development.
A crucial matter in the management and operation of the VHL and its complementary networks is to promote, increase and sustain visibility, accessibility, quality, and the use and impact of scientific and technical information generated in developing countries. This aspect of the VHL makes it a critical forum of developing countries, due to its insertion and proactive participation in international and global flows of information.
As a result of its collective construction, and the fact it is produced and used through systematic cooperation among local, national and global institutions, the VHL is established and operated as a national, regional and global public asset.
This extraordinary projection the VHL in its first ten years of operation is an example of regional and international cooperation among countries, overcoming social, political, economic and cultural barriers.
However, the current positive experience and knowledge in Latin America and the Caribbean towards national and thematic networking, with information products, services and cooperative events constitute a significant and growing social force that drives the processes to overcome challenges and resistances. Furthermore, they have been able to continuously renovate themselves, according to national and regional conditions, and have contributed to the international state-of-the-art in information and scientific and technical knowledge.
The creation, establishment, consolidation and progress of the VHL in the past ten years, together with positive perspectives for the future, have as common denominator the PAHO/WHO and its technical cooperation in scientific and technical information for the development of health, which is coordinated and performed by its specialized center, BIREME - Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information.
The role and importance of the BIREME as an essential forum involved in developing information and scientific communication in Latin America and the Caribbean and its contribution to the south-south cooperation, was acknowledged in several events celebrating its 40th anniversary, throughout 2007. One of these events stood out. Held in August, it gathered at the headquarters of the PAHO Representative, in Brasilia, Margaret Chan, Director of WHO; Mirta Roses Periago, Director of PAHO; Reinaldo Guimarães, Secretary of Sciences, Technology and Strategic Inputs of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, representing the Minister of Health; Diego Victória, PAHO Representative in Brazil; Abel L. Packer, Director of BIREME, and authorities and representatives of institutions that are partners of BIREME.
On her inaugural speech for the second term-in-office as Director of PAHO, on February 1st, 2008, Mirta Roses emphasized the importance of working with the VHL by stating "it is also one of my priorities to promote interventions that have proven effective, to incorporate scientific knowledge and ethical considerations in policy-making and public information, and to promote information exchange and collaborative, transparent research that is accessible for public scrutiny by facilitating the capture and documentation of traditional knowledge and good practices and the dissemination of the lessons learned. To these ends, during this new term I will seek to strengthen information systems, health surveillance, the measurement of inequalities and of the burden of disease, and the analysis and use of information for decision-making. I will do so in partnership with other international agencies and through PAHO publications such as Core Health Data and Health in the Americas, as well as the Virtual Health Library and the Virtual Campus of Public Health".
Thus, the BIREME has systematically improved the structures, mechanisms, methodologies and technologies of technical cooperation in scientific and technical information on health by means of the VHL, taking into account its three main operational aspects: the social networks of producers, intermediaries and users of scientific, technical and factual information; the networks of sources and flows of information with open and universal access; and the networks of learning and informed environments guided to knowledge management in forums, contexts and communities.
One of the priorities in this process is to promote and strengthen shared leadership and governance as one of the principles of the VHL model. In networking, BIREME maintains and updates the standards of management of sources and flows of information, as an essential condition for convergence, division of work in production of sources of information, and its interoperability to support and expand the flows of information. These standards and their implementation in technological platforms enable a decentralized operation, which simultaneously converges producers, intermediaries and users of information.
Shared leadership, governance and operation of information products, services and events in the VHL network are performed and assured by BIREME through mechanisms that encourage a proactive and autonomous participation of diverse national and thematic forums that operate on the VHL. Some of the most important regional mechanisms of this action comprise the VHL Regional Coordination Meetings and the Regional Congress on Health Sciences Information (CRICS). These events are held every two to three years and gather representatives of institutions that are producers, intermediaries and users of scientific and technical information, of national research, education and healthcare systems, besides researchers, students and healthcare professionals. These events enable exchanging ideas, experiences, challenges and advances to adopt, develop, operate and renovate the VHL at institutional, local, national and regional levels. Furthermore, they are of paramount importance to promote debates and keep the VHL abreast with the international state-of-the-art, as well as integration and interoperation with international and global sources and flows of information and knowledge.
The 5th VHL Regional Coordination Meeting (VHL5) and the 8th Regional Congress on Health Sciences Information (CRICS8) will take place in Rio de Janeiro, on September 16-19, 2008, and are organized by the FIOCRUZ in collaboration with BIREME/PAHO/WHO. The VHL, ten years after its launching and with continuous development, will have an ideal and privileged forum at these events to celebrate, evaluate and renovate for the future.
"Celebrating ten years of extraordinary advances and having faced many challenges in its evolution, the VHL is considerably updated, contemporary and innovative as a model of management for networks of sources and flows of scientific information", stated the Director of BIREME, Abel L. Packer.
This site to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the VHL will be updated throughout 2008 and is open to receive contributions from all those who use, feed and guide the VHL products and services.