Public Services

Over the years, the IHS Library has accumulated a modest but specialized collection of health information resources comprising books, reference manuals, journals, reports, monographs, newsletters, statistical publications, government publications, newspaper clippings, annual reports, conference proceedings, audio / video resources etc. The library’s collection in the area of health economics, health informatics, community health, health insurance, health services research, health policy studies, vital and health statistics includes resources not easily available elsewhere in the country. The library’s official documents collection (ODC) includes communications, reports and documents on health issues, services and programmes, issued by state and central governments. Vital and health statistics related reports by the National Sample Survey Organisation, RGI and other organizations are regularly collected.

Shri Arjun Rao, Spl. Chief Secretary, Department of Health & Family Welfare, AP, visiting the IHS Library

A computerized catalogue of library resources is available for easy retrieval. The catalogue gives details of the library holding, including author, title, and keywords. Two dedicated Internet access stations are provided for library users. Access to bibliographic databases such as the POPLINE and MEDLINE is available. The library is open for extended hours from 9 am to 7 pm. A full time librarian and assistants are available to help users access the bibliographic resources. Printing and photocopying services are provided to library users. Students and staff of IHS have unrestricted access to library resources. Health care professionals, researchers and general public can access library resources for a nominal membership fee. 

The Institute, as a matter of principle, publishes all its research and consultancy outputs through working papers, reports, data sets, or monographs. These publications are available to public for a nominal price, to cover cost of publication. List of IHS publications are provided in the IHS capacity statement, which is updated from time to time as well as through the Institute’s web site. Publications can be obtained personally from the Institute’s Front Office or by writing to the Communications and Services Officer.

Generating the evidence and information base for health policy is necessary to improve a community’s capacity to effectively deal with its health care and related issues. But mere availability of research results is not enough. A community must be able to use evidence and information through its various formal and informal institutions. Usage of evidence and -

Prof. Susan Beth Rifkin, London School of Economics, delivering a lecture on "Future of Primary Health Care?",   6th June 2003

information for policy is predicate on awareness by general public and knowledge among the public health community, of results from health system and related studies. Towards this end, the IHS has been striving to provide opportunity to persons interested in improvement of the Andhra Pradesh health system to share and learn from the insights of top class intellectuals and public health analysts. The Institute arranges public health lectures, whenever there is an opportunity of having the time from reputed health system researchers and health policy analysts. Title of the lecture is identified in consultation with the visiting public health analyst. The public health lectures are open to any one interested in the subject. Admission is free. The events are publicized through posters, notices and news paper. In addition, special invitations are sent out to members of the IHS, public health officials, news media persons, and opinion leaders in the medical and health community.  presentations, a book exhibition, an inaugural session, speaker presentations, Question & Answer interaction, and a valedictory session. A report of the proceedings is published along with a review of literature concerning the topic. Two Public Health Symposia have been conducted till date. The first Symposium was on "Costs of Poor Health Habits - Sedentary Lifestyle, Heavy Drinking and Smoking". The second Symposium was on "Shielding our Children from Accidents".

This database of Health Care Institutions (HCIs) in the AP (APHIDB) contains basic identifying information about public, private forprofit and nonprofit HCIs. This data base was set up in the year 1993, starting with 3,000 records. As of May 2003, the data base has 19,824 HCI’s listed in it. APHIDB is an effort to make comprehensive information available about HCIs in a structured way. APHIDB is made available by IHS over its local area network to visiting public, researchers and health policy analysts for reference. Standard queries to generate summaries by hospital location, size or type of service, etc. are provided. Individual hospitals can also be queried. Special queries have been written to meet specific requirement of researchers. Mostly people have used the data base to generate list of hospitals at a chosen place, or to generate a sampling frame of hospitals in a given area for purposes of research. Nominal service charges are collected for the query services.

The Institute of Health Systems has set up a computerised database of Medicinal flora called "MEDFLOR - INDIA". Published and unpublished literature containing ethnobotanical information are collected. These articles are coded by an ethnobiologist to yield structured information for the database. The Institute provides search and query services to researchers, research institutions, public health workers about medicinal plants. This database was set up in the year 1993. To start with, the Institute is focusing on the medicinal plants in A.P. So far 200 unique usage entries of 400 plant species have been incorporated in the database. The database was set up in technical assistance from the department of pharmacy, University of Illiniois at Chicago (UIC) and the department of botany, S K University, Anantapur, Editorial guidelines for MEDFLOR and a format for collection of ethnobotanical information has been developed.