The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation provided a grant of £20,000 in 2007/08.
This funding has enabled the joint appointment with the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital (RLHH) of an Information Centre Manager, Gerhard Bissels, formerly Librarian at the UCL Eastman Dental Institute Library. From April 2007, Gerhard has been preparing the launch of CAMLIS, Europe’s first comprehensive CAM library and information service. CAMLIS supports researchers, healthcare professionals and managers, as well as patients and members of the public with an interest in CAM, through its hybrid print and on-line collection. The reading room at the RLHH will be open to enquirers from July 2008. An online service will be launched at the same time (www.cam.nhs.uk) and will allow federated searching across a wide range of quality screened resources - from library catalogues to e-journals and databases - and by doing so is expected to become the portal to CAM information for the UK and beyond.
The RCCM benefits both from administrative support provided by CAMLIS and from its capabilities for providing and disseminating the evidence base for CAM. The collaboration with the RLHH complements other projects the RCCM has undertaken, notably the development of the National Library for Health's CAM Specialist Library (www.library.nhs.uk/cam/) as well as extensive reviews of the CAM research literature in the main areas of NHS provision: cancer, mental health, coronary heart disease and stroke and chronic conditions (e.g. arthritis, asthma, back pain, diabetes and multiple sclerosis), for the Department of Health. A longer term goal of the RCCM is to establish a National Centre for CAM – similar to that in the United States (www.nccam.nih.gov).
Visit the Research Council for Complementary Medicine website.