OpenAthens registration for community pharmacists and pharmacy technicians

Published on: 22nd July 2013 | Updated on: 15th March 2022

Community pharmacists and pharmacy technicians involved in providing NHS services in England can obtain an NHS OpenAthens account to access a range of quality healthcare information online made available by the NHS, such as full-text journal articles that are normally only available with a subscription.

Users can access Healthcare Databases Advanced Search and nationally purchased content, which includes bibliographic databases from:

  • Ovid (Medline, Embase, AMED, HMIC and PsycINFO)
  • ProQuest (BNI)
  • Full-text databases from EBSCO (Cinahl and Health Business Elite)
  • Journals from the BMJ and AMA collections.

You may also be able to access extra content which has been purchased in your NHS region.

Once an OpenAthens account has been set up, access to resources is available 24/7 from any internet enabled device.


OpenAthens registration

You can register for an OpenAthens account via an online form on the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) website.

Register for an OpenAthens account

Guidance on the registration process can be found on the NICE website.

Registration is confirmed immediately if registration is undertaken using an NHSmail email address.

It is also possible to register through a standard internet connection using a non-NHSmail email address, but the application may take up to 15 days to be processed whilst eligibility is verified and you may need to contact your regional NHS helpdesk to have your eligibility verified. To prevent any delays in the registration process, it is important to ensure that the name used in the application matches your name as it appears in the General Pharmaceutical Council register.

On the registration form, within the ‘Please enter your organisation’ field, search for Other eligible staff in the **Your NHS Region Name**.

More information on OpenAthens

For more information on this topic please email comms.team@cpe.org.uk

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