Assistance
Assistrance is a major part of INRS’s activity. Requests for expertise cover the medical, technical and legal fields. This is provided by INRS free of charge for companies falling under the general social security scheme and all of their employees.
The Institute receives more than 10,000 requests for expertise each year. The requests are made by State bodies, national and regional Social Security services, health and safety managers in companies, occupational health services, Health, Safety and Working Conditions Committees in enterprises (CHSCTs) and employees.
A team of experts
To answer questions, INRS has a team of experts, researchers, engineers, legal advisors, physicians and documentalists.
They provide answers in various forms:
- direct information by telephone or e-mail,
- sending of documents,
- a more technical response provided by an expert in the event of more complex questions,
- a referral to more relevant bodies or resources outside INRS
An exceptional collection of documents
The collection of documents in the documentation centre in Paris is unique in France. With a focus on occupational risk prevention, it comprises over 70,000 documents (52,000 articles from journals, 17,000 books and non-recurrent publications: brochures, standards, theses, etc.) and a large collection of cd-roms and dvd-roms. Every year, some 2,000 new references are added.
Enquirers therefore have access to most publications on the topic of prevention in France and abroad (mainly USA and UK). To facilitate their research, enquirers may be assisted by a specialised documentalist at the documentation centre.
This collection can be consulted via the application INRS biblio. Over 40% of the references in the database are in English.