High-Reliability, Person-Centered Health Care: It Can’t Happen without the National Library of Medicine

As health care migrates from the hospital and clinic to the home and community, so to must the National Library of Medicine (NLM). In 2017, the NLM established NLM Strategic Plan 2017-2027: A Platform for Biomedical Discovery and Data-Powered Health, which will position the Library to carry out its congressionally mandated mission and support the important work of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by creating a future in which data and information transform and accelerate biomedical discover and improve health and health care.

The strategic plan focuses on three essential, interdependent goals that will help guide the Library’s priorities over the next 10 years its mission is to collect and integrate an expanding set of information resources, and enables them to be analyzed by tools emerging from the informatics and data science research front. Those goals are to:
1. accelerate discovery and advance health through data-driven research;
2. reach more people in more ways through enhanced dissemination and engagement; and
3. build a workforce for data-driven research and health.
What’s new, different, and exciting for the NLM here is:
… a discovery process energized by the concepts of open science
… a commitment to engage with persistence
… a recognition of the central role of people and patients in the workforce of the future