Case Study: NHS England tailored self registration scheme

Founded in 1948, the National Health Service (NHS) of the UK is the largest health organisation in Europe. As well as providing free healthcare for everyone that needs it in the UK, the NHS also has a commitment to investing in future treatments and expanding medical knowledge. Between 2002 and 2003, the Department of Health will spend approximately £540 million on their Policy Research Programme and Research and Development in the NHS. The NHS is the largest single employer in the UK with over 1.2 million staff.

The NHS National Core Content project was established in 2002 to purchase electronic resources for the NHS on a national basis. The project is funded by the NHS Workforce Development Confederations, and aims to provide all NHS staff and the wider NHS family with access to a core collection of key electronic resources. The service was launched on 1st April 2003 with access controlled by the Athens access management system.

The first contracts from this national collaborative procurement project were worth more than £4.8 million over the first three years, and provided access to clinical databases from Dialog, including an innovative on-line learning tutorial; full text journals from ProQuest; and an electronic publishing agreement through membership of Biomed Central. For more information on NHS e-resources see the National electronic Library for Health at http://www.nelh.nhs.uk/.

Athens for NHS England

Prior to April 2003, the NHS regional and local libraries purchased e-resources for their members separately. Some libraries used Athens usernames and some did not. There was no standard set of usernames across the NHS, although there was a large and growing network infrastructure called NHSNet.

To facilitate access to the core content e-resources in particular, but also access to all other e-resources, it was decided to establish a co-ordinated username self-registration scheme which would enable any member of the NHS family to request an Athens username associated with his organisation. Validation of the request would be automatic if the request came from an NHSNet PC, thus providing almost instantaneous response. Requests made from non-NHS PCs would be validated by an administrator of the requested organisation, and are processed simply by ticking a box, and using Athens bulk upload facilities to take over. Usernames and passwords are created automatically based on the users name e.g. nhsJSmith004 and emailed directly to the users registered email address, thus providing a smooth and seamless process.

A hierarchy of NHS organisations has been established, starting with NHS England, then the regions, then a division into geographical areas, usually counties, then finally into the individual organisations, such as primary care trusts, hospitals etc. The hierarchical nature of this structure enables resources to be purchased and authorised at national, regional and local level, allowing flexibility at all levels.

This system has proved very attractive to NHS users. After one full year of operation, over 258,000 users have registered, which constitutes an amazing 20% of the total workforce. Usage figures to e-resources are climbing dramatically and the Athens Service Desk is still receiving calls saying Wow. Can I really do this

Portal opportunities

This infrastructure enables the NHS to build sophisticated portals which can list and search all the e-resources available to a user. The NHS North West portal, Aditus, is an example of this, where any member of the public can view free resources, members of the NHS family can view a much greater list of resources. With Athens authentication, these portals can be used anywhere anytime, with the re-assurance that authorisation is being handled correctly. Athens single sign-on capability makes the user experience seamless and rewarding.

Resources available to the general public


Resources available to a member of staff of NHS North West.