Innovation - Sun rises on health sector path-finder site. Chasing the Sun is a path-finding UK-Australian collaboration to provide an after hours on-line reference service for urgent clinical questions relating to patient care. got a measure of its scope and ambitions as the project goes live.

Chasing the Sun will allow health professionals in the south west of England to have access to out-of-hours librarian support to reach life-saving information, courtesy of their Australian counterparts. And when the Aussie librarians are tucked up in bed, librarians in the UK will return the favour for enquiries from Oz.

The initial participants in the project are the South Australian Health Services Libraries' Consortium (SAHSLC) and the South West Information for Clinical Effectiveness (SWICE) network. The project's UK leader is Stuart Benjamin, knowledge resources development manager at the Avon Gloucestershire & Wiltshire Workforce Development Confederation, and the Australian co-ordinator is Mary Peterson, library manager at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

A link to the CTS service will be available on participating library intranets. These currently include NHS libraries in the South West of England (plus the Royal Free Hospital, London) and the libraries of the South Australian Health Services Libraries' Consortium (SAHSLC).

The project was a compelling proposition for NHS libraries keeping a close eye on their budgets. While many healthcare libraries can be accessed 24 hours a day by library users, staffing such a service is extremely expensive.

The site has proved a trail-blazer, winning several awards even before launch. Benjamin says: "It will provide an opportunity for supporting good evidence-based clinical decision making and enhance the principle of best practice among clinical staff. It has already established a platform for co-operative national and international ventures."

The CTS team has had its work cut out providing common access to information. "Current licensing agreements mean that we cannot directly use one another's resources, but a list of resources, which are free or can be shared, is being prepared by the team," says Benjamin.

Project leaders had to research any other practical differences between the two countries so that librarians might at least be aware of them. For example, drug availability is different. "It would also have been handy if we were both using the same system, but we are not and we have to work with that. We have let the suppliers - Dialog here and Ovid in Australia - know what we are doing."