The following searching tools will help you to find quality, targeted information on health and pharmacy quickly and easily. The tools can be used to search for websites, journal articles, other publications and clinical information and standards such as evidence-based guidelines. See the individual sections for more information and suggestions for which tools are best used in each situation. And finally, if you wish to find out more about how to make the most effective use of the internet have a look at the Guides to searching section.
Health gateways provide categorised lists of resources focussed on the subject of health. The resources listed have been evaluated by informed individuals. Gateways are often referred to as 'directories', and sometimes 'portals'. Resources included in gateways can cover a wide range of types including articles, organisations' websites, discussion lists, guidance and official documents. All gateways offer a search function which allows you to access their resources quickly.
Intute: health and life sciences
About: a gateway to evaluated, quality internet resources in health and medicine, aimed at students, researchers, academics and practitioners in the health and medical sciences. It provides access to organisations, websites, reports, guidance, protocols, factsheets and more.
Use it to: find quality-assured medical and health resources in the UK. All records in the Intute database have been hand selected and evaluated by information and/or subject specialists, according to a set of established, published evaluation criteria.
How: carry out a quick keyword search for access to over 31,000 resource descriptions or log in to save Intute records of interest and database searches. You can also receive a weekly email alert listing new records added to the database which match your specified subject areas or saved searches.
NHS Core Content (England only)
About: Core Content brings together evaluated resources that are freely available to eligible users within the "NHS Family" from wherever they may be working. A major resource for pharmacists it is worthwhile investigating the process to gain access.
Use it to: search clinical databases and access fulltext journals and e-books.
How: access is protected by the Athens Authentication system. This means all users require a valid NHS Athens account. Information about obtaining an account is available from the Core Content homepage. Community pharmacists in England should contact their local PCT to enquire about access.
National Library for Health
About: the NLH aims to be 'a modern hybrid, network-based library service for the NHS, providing seamless access to high quality knowledge' and 'to ensure that clinicians and patients have easy access to best current knowledge wherever and whenever it is needed'. NHS Core Content, Map of Medicine and Specialist Libraries are all provided by the NLH.
Use it to: access guidance, clinical information, patient information and fulltext resources.
How: some of the resources are freely available to everyone, others require you to have an Athens username and password. More information is available on the site. See NHS Core Content above for more information.
Specialist libraries (NLH)
About: part of the National Library for Health, these individual libraries focus on speciality themes within health and medicine. Each is a collection of clinical and non-clinical resources. They often provide information about relevant health weeks that are run throughout the year.
Use it to: find evaluated resources on specialisms such as cancer, skin disorders and women's health.
How: the resources listed are freely available to everyone.
National electronic Library for Medicines (NeLM)
About: part of the National Library for Health this site aims to provide timely and relevant information on medicines and support prescribing to the NHS at the point of care. Sections include non-medical prescribing, evidence-based resources, new drug information and drug alerts as well as specific sections for hospital and community pharmacists.
Use it to: stay up to date with prescribing developments and new information on medicines. Subscribe to the RSS feed for automatic updates.
How: some resources are only accessible to NHS users. See "NHS Core Content" for more information.
HOWIS
About: HOWIS, the official website of NHS Wales, is a seamless service bringing together information sources about the health and lifestyle of the population of Wales into a simple, electronic-based service. The site covers six sections: NHS Wales - how devolution has affected the health service in Wales; Staff - the different professions and jobs within the NHS in Wales; Components - how the different parts of the NHS fit together; Policy - topical areas such as clinical governance and performance management; Funding and Legislation - how the NHS is paid for and what laws are made in relation to it and History - how and why the NHS is as it is today.
Use it to: find information on public health issues and health advice for travellers, see statistical resources about health service delivery and performance, and download publications. The NHS Wales e-library for health provides access to a range of free and licensed resources (for staff) including databases, evidence based resources, e-journals, e-books and guidelines.
How: All NHS Wales staff are eligible to access the e-journals and other resources made available via the e-library service. The majority of resources are restricted to NHS Wales staff and access to these is via an Athens personal account and password. Apply online to see if you eligible.
NHS Scotland elibrary
About: The NHS Scotland e-Library aims to empower the healthcare family and benefit patient care by providing high quality knowledge support throughout the patient journey. It is the primary vehicle for delivery of NHS Education’s national strategy for NHS Scotland Knowledge Services Exploiting the Power of Knowledge in NHS Scotland.The e-Library aims to support: clinical and managerial decision-making; education, training and lifelong learning and research and development.
Use it to: access 5000+ fulltext electronic journals; 5000+ electronic books; 100 + databases of journal articles and 1000s of evaluated health and social care websites as well as patient information and NHS Scotland publications.
How: All NHS Scotland staff can register with the site to gain access to the password-protected content including books, journals and databases, and Good Practice collections of management tools and techniques.
BUBL LINK Catalogue of Internet Resources - Pharmacy
About: provides selected internet resources on pharmacy.
Use it to: access a short list of reliable sites on many aspects of pharmacy.
See also: BUBL LINK Catalogue of Internet Resources - Pharmaceutics
: BUBL LINK Catalogue of Internet Resources - Pharmacology
PJ Online
About: web site of The Pharmaceutical Journal (official journal of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain) and its family of publications. It contains the full text of the following journals: The Pharmaceutical Journal; Prescribing & Medicines Management; Hospital Pharmacist and Tomorrows Pharmacist plus abstracts from the International Journal of Pharmacy Practice (1997-2004). The archive of the full text of The Pharmaceutical Journal available via PJ Online dates from August 7, 1999.
Use it to: check current contents and archive material, see news items, and check out the links page including a Health Links section grouped by condition or subject.
How: follow the 'back issues' link to find articles from a particular issue, use the search box to search for a keyword or see the At a Glance section for an overview of pages on the site and other links. For tracing elusive articles from past issues of The Pharmaceutical Journal please contact the Library.
Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions pages of Intute
About: part of Intute (see above) these pages are a free catalogue of hand-selected and evaluated internet resources in nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions.
Use it to: find reliable, current, high quality sources of biomedical information and guidance in matters relating to nursing, midwifery and allied health professions, provided by reputable sources which are free from commercial or other bias, principally from a UK perspective.
How: the resources listed are freely available to everyone.
Health on the Net Foundation
About: non-profit, non-governmental organisation set up to promote and guide the deployment of useful and reliable online medical and health information. The site provides access to HONselect, HON's new search integrator for strictly medical and health queries. HONselect combines five information types - MeSH terms, authoritative scientific articles, healthcare news, internet sites and multimedia - into one service to focus and accelerate your search. They award the HONcode to health websites that they feel provide authoritative, trustworthy internet-based medical information. It is possible to search for keywords within these selected sites only.
Use it to: locate media and images in the HONmedia section as well as for documents and other print resources.
Medic8
About: a UK medical information website for healthcare professionals and consumers around the world. All content has been reviewed by a qualified UK doctor prior to listing.
Use it to: access information about family health, travel health and cosmetic surgery. Resources also include a medical dictionary, encyclopaedia, A-Z guides to a number of diseases and conditions and a search engine that focuses on medicine and health.
How: browse the site by topic, disease or condition or search by keyword from the front page.
HealthWeb (US Focus)
About: a US directory compiled by the health sciences librarians of the Committee for Institutional Cooperation and supported by the US National Library of Medicine (NLM).
Use it to: access evaluated non-commercial, health-related, internet-accessible resources.
How: quick search or refine by topic listed (including pharmacy and pharmacology).
MedlinePlus (US Focus)
About: brings together authoritative information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organisations.
Use it to: access US-focused information. Resources include 700 health topics on conditions, diseases and wellness, information on drugs and supplements, a medical encyclopaedia and dictionary. Interactive health education resources are also available.
How: browse the site by topic or search the whole site.
A bibliographic database is an electronic version of a catalogue or index. It allows the user to identify publications or journal articles by author, title, subject or keyword; see a full citation or reference for the item; view additional information about the item such as an abstract or index terms. Sometimes a link to the complete full text version of the document is supplied.
PubMed
About: PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals. It includes articles dating back to the 1950s.
Use it to: find links to full text articles, conference proceedings and official publications. While the focus of the database is North American literature, it does contain a lot of information from the UK and around the world and therefore is an excellent general resource.
How: carry out a quick search using the text search box or for more advanced options use the Limits tab to specify type of article e.g. clinical trial or whether the focus should be human or animal. Free online training tutorials and information are available. See below for details.
PubMed Online Training
About: a thoroughweb-based learning programme is available or alternatively for brief tutorials on specific topics see the PubMed Quick Tours.A PubMed Basics handout is also available.
Use it to: make your searching of PubMed more effective and efficient.
How: decide which area you need help on and target your learning or spend some time working through the full tutorial. Print out the PubMed Basics handout for easy reference when searching.
TRIP Database
About:described as the internet's leading resource for evidence-based practice and medicine (EBM), the TRIP (Turning Research Into Practice) database allows 'users to easily and rapidly identify the highest quality evidence from a wide range of sources'.
Use it to: locate evidence-based resources including articles, patient information leaflets, medical images, online guidance from PRODIGY, SIGN, etc. and other useful websites. The site also provides links to other evidence-based resources and an introduction to evidence-based medicine and practice.
How: search two to three terms at once for best results and then choose to filter further by specialisation (including pharmacology and pharmacy), Medline articles, guidelines or systematic reviews.
Cochrane Library
About: a collection of databases that contain high–quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, Cochrane reviews represent the highest level of evidence on which to base clinical treatment decisions. Includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, a source of reliable and up-to-date information on the effects of interventions in healthcare, that promotes the search for evidence in the form of clinical trials and other studies of interventions.
Use it to: locate up-to-date evidence-based information to inform best practice.
How: search by keyword in title or browse reviews by topic or A-Z list. The advanced search allows you to limit or combine your search terms and the MeSH search to search by the US National Library of Medicine's - Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms and thesaurus.
Literature search serviceThe Library has access to several databases including RPS e-PIC, Medline, Cinahl, AMED and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts. If you wish us to carry out a literature search on one or more of these databases on your behalf, please contact us or for more information see our Electronic Library page. And don't forget to ask about our Document Delivery Service if you wish to obtain copies of articles you have found. |
General
A search engine is software that automatically visits websites, records and indexes the data found within them in a database, and generates results based on a user's search criteria. General search engines will index as many websites as possible to enable the broadest range of results possible.
Google
About: Google is perhaps the best known of the general search engines. By accessing the UK version of Google you can limit your results to the UK only.
Use it to: find information about any subject and find images on the internet.
How: the more specific the keywords you enter as a search term, the fewer and more likely to be relevant are the results you will retrieve. General searches can often retrieve too many results. In this instance it is better to use a subject-specific search engine, or a gateway. The advanced search will enable you to make your search more specific.
How to get better results when searching (using Google).
About: this guide will help you search Google with most effect.
Use it to: learn shortcuts and make the most of Google's powerful search facilities and services.
Exalead
About: a good general search engine that gives you the option of refining your search with suggested related terms and provides a preview image of each site in the search results. Personalise the webpage with links to sites that you visit often.
Use it to: find information about any subject, find images on the internet and generate a search page with easy links to your favourite sites.
How: try a general search and then use the options provided by Exalead to refine your search further. Remember, if the results are not specific enough, that it is often better to use a subject-specific search engine, or a gateway.
Subject-specific
Like general search engines subject search engines will index and search the entire web. However, when returning results, pages from their stated speciality e.g. academic or health and medicine, will be ranked higher than others.
Scirus
About: comprehensive science-specific search engine on the internet searching over 250 million science-specific web pages.
Use it to: locate general scientific information, covering the full range of science disciplines, not just medicine and health.
Google Scholar
About: from the Google stable, but this search engine focuses on scholarly and academic literature.
Use it to: broadly search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organisations.
Windows Live Academic Search
About: another search engine that focuses on scholarly and academic literature.
Use it to: broadly search for scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organisations.
Medic8 Medical Search Engine
About: indexes a relatively small number of medical websites on the internet that have been hand-picked by qualified UK doctors. All sites selected for indexing are chosen based on the quality of their content.
Use it to: search for resources that are specifically in the subject of medicine or health.
SUMsearch (US Focus)
About: a US resource that combines meta-searching (searching across multiple sites) and contingency searching (narrowing or broadening a searching dependent on results) in order to automate searching for medical evidence.
Use it to: search across a number of the best internet sites, this site formats your query for each site, executes contingency searches, then returns a small choice of documents to the clinician.
Fealth (US Focus)
About: a US search engine specific to fitness and health.
Use it to: search by keyword or from the topic list. Topics include fitness, health of the elderly and conditions and diseases. Also, view US health statistics for various conditions.
Healthline (US Focus)
About: a site to find, understand and manage information about consumer health. Unlike a general search engine this site only searches the top health sites on the internet, so users receive precise and relevant health information. Its search technology accepts medical and non-medical terms returning results for equivalent but differently phrased searches, for example, a search for "brittle bone disease" will also return results for "Osteogenesis Imperfecta", its medical equivalent.
Use it to: search the web, news sites or online dictionary or browse resources listed by health channel. Alternatively, see the separate sections on diseases and symptoms, drugs and tests for specific queries.
A metasearch engine will cross-search many search engines at the same time producing a wider range of results. Some search only the most popular search engines while others also search lesser-known engines, newsgroups, and other databases. Two popular ones are listed below.
ixquick
About: a metasearch engine that searches many popular search engines at the same time. Combined, the results from these engines cover more of the internet than any one search engine on its own.
Use it to: find results that are recommended by a number of search engines. This should increase the quality of your results as they will be the result of a consensus and you will not be reliant on just one engine.
Metacrawler
About: searches the internet's top search engines, including Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, Ask.com, About, MIVA, LookSmart and more.
Use it to: search for images or resources for a wider selection of results.
While there is a lot of information on the internet, searching it effectively is quite difficult and time-consuming. The guides listed below will help you shorten the length of time you spend searching the internet by introducing you to the most effective strategies. Remember to record time spent on working through these guides as part of your CPD as they will, in the long run, help you to achieve more effective, evidence-based practice.
Evaluating Internet Health Information: A Tutorial from the National Library of Medicine
About: a step-by-step guide to evaluating health information and resources on the internet provided by the National Library of Medicine. The tutorial lasts approximately 16 minutes.
Use it to: help you evaluate resources that you find through other means, such as general search engines.
How to find the good and avoid the bad or ugly: a short guide to tools for rating quality of health information on the internet
BMJ 2002;324:598-602 (9 March)
About: this is a freely available article from the British Medical Journal that discusses useful tools for evaluating resources on the internet.
Use it to: help you find different methods of evaluating resources that you find on the internet.
Internet Pharmacist Internet tutorial
About: a tutorial specifically for pharmacists which uses a "teach yourself" approach to searching the internet and allows opportunities for assessing what you have learnt.
Use it to: learn more about searching the internet, with specific reference to sites of use to pharmacists, and see how much you know already.
How: work through the tutorial and answer the multiple choice questions to ensure your learning has been successful.