Databases

Databases Specific for Cancer

CancerData
The National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) collects, quality assures and analyses data on all people living in England who are diagnosed with cancer. It is part of the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS Digital (NHSD). All cases of cancer diagnosed and treated in the NHS in England are registered by NCRAS.
CanSAR
canSAR, put together by the Institute of Cancer Research, is an integrated knowledge-base that brings together multidisciplinary data across biology, chemistry, pharmacology, structural biology, cellular networks and clinical annotations, and applies machine learning approaches to provide drug-discovery useful predictions.
National Cancer Institute Resources for Researchers
Resources for Researchers is a directory of NCI-supported tools and services for cancer researchers.

You have access to the following databases either via your OpenAthens account or freely online.

Key Cancer Databases

EMBASE (Ovid) 1974 to present This link opens in a new window
Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) is a biomedical and pharmacological database containing more than 30 million records including articles from more than 8,500 journals. It is especially strong in its coverage of drug and pharmaceutical research, pharmacology and toxicology.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
MEDLINE (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window
MEDLINE provides authoritative medical information on medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, pre-clinical sciences, and much more. Created by the National Library of Medicine, MEDLINE uses MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) indexing with tree, tree hierarchy, subheadings and explosion capabilities to search citations from over 5,600 current biomedical journals.
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
MEDLINE® (Ovid) This link opens in a new window
Ovid MEDLINE® covers the international literature on biomedicine, including the allied health fields and the biological and physical sciences, humanities, and information science as they relate to medicine and health care. Information is indexed from approximately 5,600 journals published world-wide.
Coverage: 1946 - present
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
MEDLINE® (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
MEDLINE® is a bibliographic database produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The database contains millions of citations, derived from thousands of biomedical and life science journals, and indexed with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH®) from the NLM controlled vocabulary. Extending back to 1946, annual input now exceeds 700,000 citations.
Coverage: 1946 - present
Access: NHS OpenAthens account
Pubmed This link opens in a new window
PubMed comprises over 25 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of biomedicine and health. PubMed also links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources. PubMed is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).
Access Free

Other Recommended Databases

ClinicalKey This link opens in a new window
UpToDate This link opens in a new window
APA PsycInfo® This link opens in a new window
BMJ Best Practice This link opens in a new window
CINAHL (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
CINAHL Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Subjects Covered:
Ambulatory care nursing
Cardiovascular nursing
Critical care nursing
Emergency medical technicians
Gerontologic nursing
Nuclear medicine technicians
Occupational therapy
Oncologic nursing
Pediatric nursing
Physical therapy
Psychiatric nursing
DynaMed This link opens in a new window
Health & Medical Collection This link opens in a new window
Health Research Premium Collection This link opens in a new window
Lexicomp This link opens in a new window
NLM Products and Services This link opens in a new window
Pubmed This link opens in a new window

The websites below can be used for finding data sets, statistics, images and other resources.

Quality Improvement

Academic Health Sciences Network

Academy of Fab NHS Stuff

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

AHSN Atlas of Solutions in Healthcare

Care Quality Commission

CASH Quality and Transformation

CHAIN

East Midlands AHSN

The Health Foundation

Health Innovation Exchange- Yorkshire and Humberside AHSN

Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP)

Imperial College London - Patient Safety Translational Research

Implementation Science

Improvement Academy

Insitute for Continous Improvement in Public Services

Institute for Healthcare Improvement - resources, tools, case studies

Kings Fund- Quality Improvement

King’s Improvement Science

Life QI

NES Scotland - Quality Improvement Zone

NHS Benchmarking Network

NHS Horizons

NHS England and NHS Improvement

NHS Improvement You Tube Channel

NHS Networks

NHS Sustainable Improvement Team

NICE Local Practice Improvers

NICE Quality Standards

Royal College of Physicians Quality Improvement

Sources4Networks

UK Government-Research and innovation in health and social care

Data & Statistics

Department of Health	https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health/about/statistics
Hospital Episode Statistics (HES)	https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-tools-and-services/data-services/hospital-episode-statistics
National archive	https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
Office of Health Economics	http://www.ohe.org/health-statistics.cfm
Office of National Statistics (ONS)	www.ons.gov.uk
Nuffield Trust	http://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/nhs-numbers
Cancer Research UK	http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/data-and-statistics
NHS Digital	https://digital.nhs.uk/
NHS England	http://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/
Public Health England	https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics?departments%5B%5D=public-health-england
King's Fund	https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/
Trauma Audit & Research Network	https://www.tarn.ac.uk/
The Health Foundation	http://www.health.org.uk/
Global Health Facts	http://kff.org/global-health-policy/
OECD	http://www.oecd.org/statistics/
United Nations	http://unstats.un.org/unsd/
WHO	http://www.who.int/gho/en/
CDC	http://www.cdc.gov/DataStatistics/

Images and MultiMedia

The following resources can be used to source general and medical images and multimedia.

When using images from the internet it is important to check copyright permissions, licensing and terms of use associated with the work. The following sources feature copyright cleared or Creative Commons licensed images, please ensure that acknowledgment or credit to the content creator is given and/or attribution of the source where required. If in doubt always assume that all images online are protected by copyright unless there is evidence to the contrary.

More information can be found at Best practices for attribution and The BIPP Guide to Using Images

MedPix®
MedPix® is a free open-access online database of medical images, teaching cases, and clinical topics, integrating images and textual metadata including over 12,000 patient case scenarios, 9,000 topics, and nearly 59,000 images.
The Cancer Imaging Archive
TCIA hosts a large archive of medical images of cancer accessible for public download. The data are organized as “collections”; typically patients’ imaging related by a common disease (e.g. lung cancer), image modality or type (MRI, CT, digital histopathology, etc) or research focus. DICOM is the primary file format used by TCIA for radiology imaging. Supporting data related to the images such as patient outcomes, treatment details, genomics and expert analyses are also provided when available.
Trip Pro
You can search for medical images using Trip Pro. To find images: run a search, then select Images. A useful filter is the "Only show images that are free to share, modify or use" tickbox.
Wellcome Collection
Find thousands of Creative Commons licensed images from historical library materials and museum objects to contemporary digital photographs.
Wikimedia Commons
An online repository of free-use images, sounds, and other media files.
Images from the History of Medicine
Images from the History of Medicine collection provides online access to images from the historical collections of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Openi
Open-i service of the National Library of Medicine enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open source literature, and biomedical image collections.
OASIS Brains project
OASIS-3 is the latest release in the Open Access Series of Imaging Studies (OASIS) that is aimed at making neuroimaging datasets freely available to the scientific community.

The following sites contain photos which can be used for free under a CC0 licence. You may use them for commercial and non-commercial purposes. You do not need to ask permission from or provide credit to the photographer or the website

Disclaimer: The information provided in this guide is intended as general guidance to copyright issues when using images from the web. The authors assume no responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions in the content of this guide.

Open Access

Open Access database, users install a browser extension which uses the article DOI to find Open Access versions.

Directory of Open Access Repositories. Global directory of academic Open Access repositories, searches can be carried out by region or by repository.

Kopernio adds a one-click access button to full-text research article PDFs on thousands of academic sites. Works with subscription and open access articles.

ScienceOpen is a freely accessible search and discovery platform that puts research in context.

The Open Access Button is a free tool that allows you to find free, legal articles with just a click and that will email an author to get a copy if one isn't available. It's available as a Chrome and Firefox browser plugin, as well as a website.

Researching support

Our staff are skilled in carrying out literature searches in support of research and patient care. We can help to save you time and ensure you find the high-quality information you need. Your searches can be saved and sent regularly to update you.

This is a free service provided by Barts Health Knowledge and Library Services to support clinical practice, service development and research. You can have your search set up as an alert so that you will be emailed details of new publications on a weekly or monthly basis.

To request a Literature search please contact us or fill in the online request form

Critical Appraisal Resources
The library have a number of resource or training that can help you develop the skills to assess the validity of a range of studies of different types. Request in person training or watch our series of videos where Barts Health Knowledge and Library Services’ Assad Lahlou and Adam Tocock use the CASP Checklist to critically appraise a paper.