this worthwhile. Hope you do, too.

HELP - the Health Education Library for People, India's first Consumer Health Education Resource Center , and one of the world's largest consumer health libraries ( as determined by the Medical Library Association , USA ) was established in 1997 to empower people by providing them with the information they need to promote their health , and prevent and treat medical problems in the family in partnership with their doctor. We are a registered charitable trust and a non-profit organisation.
We offer the following facilities:

1. Airconditioned reading rooms, with a seating capacity for 20-25 people;
2. An upto date collection of over 5000 consumer health books, 10000 pamphlets, and many magazines and newsletters
3. Audiovisual educational media, including over 600 videotapes. Videos can be viewed in privacy in the library
4. Computer software , including over 30 CD-ROMs on all health and medical topics
5. Photocopying facilities, at Re 1 a page
6. A lecture hall ( seating capacity of over 70 people) with a big-screen projector which we give free to NGOs for health talks.

We have access to information on every health and medical topic under the sun - explained in terms which the layperson can understand.
HELP has become a prototype of the modern digital library. Our website at http://www.healthlibrary.com is India's leading health portal, and receives over half a million hits a month !
We are a public library - everyone is welcome ! Entry to HELP is free !
We are open Monday through Saturday, from 10 am to 6.30 pm. For those unable to come personally to the library, we also answer questions by post or e-mail. This is an innovative service called MISS-HELP ( Medical Information Search Services from HELP ) which allows us to provide medical information to users from all over India .

We feel patients are the largest untapped healthcare resource and that Information Therapy is Powerful Medicine !

We help patients save money on medical care by
1. Promoting SelfCare and helping them to do as much for themselves as they can
2. Helping them with Evidence-Based Guidelines , so that they can ask for the right medical treatment that they need - no more and no less
3. Helping them with Veto Power, so they can say No to medical care they don’t need, thus preventing overtesting and unnecessary surgery .

Please do come and visit HELP !

Our focus areas now are:
1. encouraging health insurance companies to invest in patient education
2. advocating information therapy
3. setting up a national network of patient education centers
4. developing patient educational materials in Indian languages for the web

Dr Aniruddha Malpani, MD
Medical Director
HELP - Health Education Library for People
Excelsior Business Center,
National Insurance Building,
Ground Floor, Near Excelsior Cinema,
206, Dr.D.N Road, Mumbai 400001
Tel. No.:65952393/65952394
helplib@vsnl.com
www.healthlibrary.com