Health Economic Evaluations Database (HEED) extended to all Cochrane contributors

We are pleased to announce that free-at-the-point-of-use access to the Health Economic Evaluations Database (HEED) has been extended to all contributors to The Cochrane Collaboration, effective immediately.

Instructions on how to access HEED are posted at the end of this articlel. Please note that you will need to enter your user name and password for Archie (The Cochrane Collaboration's online information management system) in order to access HEED.

Like the NHS Economic Evaluations Database (NHS EED), HEED is a specialist health economics electronic literature database.  Alongside NHS EED (>7,000 records of full economic evaluations), HEED is one of the most comprehensive databases in its class (>43,000 records of health economic analyses, including but not limited to full economic evaluations). NHS EED is already published as part of The Cochrane Library and HEED is now accessible, free-at-the-point-of-use, to all Cochrane contributors. Further information about HEED is available from: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/9780470510933

Did you know that the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions recommends that all Cochrane intervention reviews include a search of NHS EED and process these search results?

This recommendation applies equally to HEED, now that it is freely accessible to all Cochrane contributors. NHS EED and HEED can be regarded as complementary resources for use in Cochrane intervention reviews, in terms of both their coverage of health economic analyses and the 'value added' information contained in their respective database records. Even if authors do not plan to subject relevant health economic analyses to the full Cochrane review process, it is proposed that they could draw on such analyses to elaborate 'economic commentary' to be included in the 'Background' and/or 'Discussion' sections of the review - "wrapping the review", in order to increase its relevance and usefulness end users. Further work is planned during 2011 to develop this approach and support its application, in consultation with Co-Eds, MEs and TSCs.

Finally, on behalf of the Campbell and Cochrane Economics Methods Group, I would like to thank the following people for supporting the initiative to extend access to HEED: David Tovey (Editor in Chief of The Cochrane Library) and his colleagues in the Cochrane Editorial Unit; Deborah Pentesco-Gilbert (Managing Editor, The Cochrane Library), Pauline Howarth (Editor, Health Economic Evaluations Database) and Peter Phillips (Knowledgebase Coordinator) at Wiley; Nick Royle (CEO, The Cochrane Collaboration); Chris Mavergames (Web Operations Manager, The Cochrane Collaboration) and his colleagues in the web team; and Monica Kjeldstrøm (Director, Cochrane Information Management System) and her colleagues in the IMS team.

Ian Shemilt
Campbell & Cochrane Economics Methods Group
i.shemilt@uea.ac.uk

**INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO ACCESS HEED - 3 OPTIONS**

OPTION 1: Go to http://www.cochrane.org/intranet/resources-databases/health-economics-evaluation-database-heed > Enter your Archie user name and password and click on 'Log in' > Click on 'Go to HEED: Health Economic Evaluations Database'

OPTION 2: Go to http://www.cochrane.org > Click on the 'Intranet' tab > Enter your Archie user name and password and click on 'Log in' > In the top left 'Intranet' menu, click on 'Resources & databases' > Click on 'Health Economic Evaluations Database (HEED)' > Click on 'Go to HEED: Health Economic Evaluations Database'

OPTION 3: It is planned to provide a link to access HEED from The Cochrane Library web pages. However, this option is not yet implemented. Instructions for using this option will be posted to CCInfo and this e-mail list once it has been implemented.