Our Mission
PiF believes that high quality consumer health information should be available to all, enabling
people to better manage their own health and be fully involved in
decisions about their care.
Our Purpose
We raise standards
PiF provides advice, guidance and training. We develop and promote quality standards for producing and appraising information, and provide tools to enable health information professionals to do their jobs.
We spread good practice
Our members share their expertise and experience, and support each other. We provide opportunities for our members to discuss the key issues and find solutions. We act as a catalyst for partnership working between organisations across the public, voluntary and private sectors to raise standards.
We are a strong collective, independent voice
We speak up for the people and organisations that produce and provide health information for patients and the public. We champion the importance of high quality information and raise the issues that are important to information producers, providers and users with policy makers. We seek to gather and share the evidence of the importance of information to health outcomes.
Our Vision
What PiF believes
1. Information is an intervention that impacts health & well-being
- It contributes to all three aspects of quality: clinical effectiveness, safety and patient experience
2. Information must adhere to quality standards
- User testing is a basic minimum requirement for consumer health information; co-design and co-production the best approach
- Information must be designed to meet different levels of health literacy
- Information production is a highly skilled activity and those who do it need an infrastructure and learning and development
3. Information provision must be integrated into health & care delivery
- All healthcare providers should have a Board Director responsible for the provision and monitoring of information for patients, with dedicated personnel and resources to deliver it
- The information given to an individual should be recorded in their care record
- Information is a complement to, not a substitute for, good communication with healthcare professionals; health professionals should offer information as part of a shared decision making process
- Healthcare providers should source information from the best quality sources to avoid unnecessary duplication.
- Health and social care professionals should be offered training and coaching to improve their communication skills
4. Information must be delivered in a supportive environment
- The most helpful information is personalised to the person receiving it: one size does not fit all
- Health professionals should be given the skills and time to help people to access, navigate, assess the relevance of, understand and act on information
5. The impact of information provision must be measured
- It is not enough to measure the volume of information provided: behaviour change and financial impact should be measured too.
An overview of PiF's work
To download a copy of PiF's annual report for 2010-2011 click here.
Page last edited: 29 September 2011
