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Visit the NTU Library webpage to view a range of subscribed databases. Below are some highly recommended databases relevant to Medicine.

1. PubMed

PubMed comprises approximately 22 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed citations and abstracts include the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and preclinical sciences. PubMed also provides access to additional relevant Web sites and links to the other NCBI molecular biology resources. PubMed is a free resource that is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

Part of PubMed is an experimental project call PubVenn. For example, a simple search on smoking AND cancer identifies the MeSH terms and the most recent cited articles. Something new you can explore when conducting a search for your research projects or scholarly activities.

2. MEDLINE (Ovid)

Regarded as the world’s premier, comprehensive biomedical and life sciences database. MEDLINE on OvidSP offers a seamless and up-to-the-minute access to the latest bibliographic citations and author abstracts from more than 5,500 biomedicine and life sciences journals in nearly 40 languages (60 languages for older journals). English abstracts are included in more than 80% of the records.

The MEDLINE on OvidSP includes:

  • Access to Ovid MEDLINE In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations
  • Access to OLDMEDLINE, approximately 2,300,000 citations to articles from international biomedical journals covering the fields of medicine, preclinical sciences and allied health sciences from 1948 through 1965 (updated yearly)
  • Limits based on PubMed’s subject subsets, such as AIDS, Bioethics, Cancer, Complementary Medicine, History of Medicine, Space Life Sciences, Systematic Reviews, Toxicology
  • Advanced mapping that analyzes users’ natural language queries and suggests appropriate terms for searching
  • Graphical controlled vocabulary thesaurus that displays Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)
  • Command-line search syntax functionality

3. CINAHL

CINAHL is a data resource for nursing and allied health professionals. CINAHL Complete provides quick and easy full-text access to premier nursing journals, evidence-based care sheets, quick lessons and more. Literature coverage includes nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.

In addition, CINAHL provides access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, audiovisuals and book chapters. It includes full-text journals, legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, research instruments and clinical trials.

4. Cochrane Library 

The Cochrane Library (ISSN 1465-1858) is a collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about Cochrane groups.

The six databases include:

  • Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR)
  • Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL)
  • Cochrane Methodology Register (CMR)
  • Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE)
  • Health Technology Assessment Database (HTA)
  • NHS Economic Evaluation Database (EED)

You can also view the highlighted reviews, editorials and special collections. Additionally, there are Podcasts from the Cochrane Library for audio listeners. There are FAQs for users to refer to when using the Cochrane Library website.

5. Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs)

Cochrane Clinical Answers (CCAs) is a derivative product of Cochrane Library. The content is highly targeted for healthcare practitioners and professionals, and other informed health care decision-makers across 20 disciplines. As of February 2015, 645 CCAs have been published and a target of 1000 CCAs by January 2016. The specialist clinical advisors are from emergency medicine, mental health, orthopedics, dermatology, haematology and infectious diseases

CCAs consist of brief clinical summaries of high-quality evidence from Cochrane systematic reviews that makes information more accessible and helps inform decision making at the point of care. Each Cochrane Clinical Answer is presented with a clinical question, short answer and an opportunity to ‘drill down’ to the evidence from relevant Cochrane reviews. The evidence is displayed in a user-friendly format, mixing narrative, numbers and graphics.

6. EMBASE (Ovid)

A biomedical and pharmacological database containing citations, abstracts and indexing from biomedical articles in peer-reviewed journals. Records number 22 million with the coverage span from 1974 onwards.

7. EBM Reviews (Ovid)

Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) Reviews is a key resource that integrates clinical expertise with systematic research.  It is a suite of 7 information resources that combines the resources of EBM into a single, fully searchable database.

EBM Reviews comprises of:

Article Reviews

ACP Journal Club (from American College of Physicians)                                                                       Over 130 journals are screened and reviewed by the editors of ACP for latest and current information in evidence-based clinical information relating to internal medicine. Contain abstracts and commentaries on the applicability of research studies to clinical practice.

Review of Topics

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews                                                                                   Consists of groups of experts over 40 clinical specialities who review studies in their area of specialty, analyse the data and write detailed reviews on the topic and findings.

Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE)                                               Provides access to selected systematic reviews on the effectiveness of clinical interventions and policies from databases such as MEDLINE and through manual review of the primary literature. Selected reviews are evaluated and summarized in full-text reports.

Definitive Controlled Trials

Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials                                                                                    A bibliographic database of definitive controlled trials, set up as part of an international effort to create an unbiased source of data for systematic reviews. It consists of over 350,000 bibliographic references to controlled trials in health care, and imposes quality control standards on included references to ensure that only reports of definite randomized controlled trials or controlled clinical trials are included.

Cochrane Methodology Register                                                                                                                 A bibliography of more than 9,000 references to controlled trials in journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings and reports, and other publications of methodologies used in health studies. Summarizes the empirical basis for decision about methods in systematic reviews.

Interventions

Health Technology Assessments (HTA)                                                                                         Produced in collaboration with Sweden’s INAHTA Secretariat, HTA brings together details on ongoing studies of the medical, social, ethical and economic implications of healthcare interventions. Contains over 4,000 records of completed and ongoing assessments from INAHTA members.

NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHSEED)                                                                                     Database provides cost-benefit analyses about healthcare interventions, with more than 6,000 abstracts of quality assessed economic evaluations. The database aims to assist decision-makers by systematically identifying and describing economic evaluations, appraising their quality and highlighting their relative strengths and weaknesses.

8. ClinicalKey

ClinicalKey is a global reference tool that provides valuable and most current clinically relevant evidence-based answers, as well as expert commentary, MEDLINE abstracts and select third-party journals. The search interface, Smart Content, is tagged with EMMeT (Elsevier Merged Medical Taxonomy), which enables ClinicalKey to understand clinical terms and thus discover medical content that is the most relevant, plus find related content that would be missed by other search engines.

9. AccessMedicine

AccessMedicine is a comprehensive, authoritative and trusted online clinical resource. It provides clinicians, residents and all health professionals with essential, current medical knowledge to conduct research, get answers to clinical questions, and provide better patient care. AccessMedicine is also optimized for use in mobile devices.

10. UpToDate 

UpToDate® is an evidence-based clinical decision support resource, enabling healthcare practitioners to make the right decisions at the point of care. UpToDate presents a comprehensive synthesis of the evidence, followed by recommendations that can be acted on at the point of care. It combines an advanced publishing platform with the rigor of a sophisticated editorial process managed by a faculty of physician authors and editors, renowned leaders in their specialties.

11. BioMed Central

BioMed Central is an independent publishing house committed to providing immediate open access to peer-reviewed biomedical research. All original research articles published by BioMed Central are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication. BioMed Central views open access to research as essential in order to ensure the rapid and efficient communication of research findings.

12. Martindale: The complete drug reference

Martindale is a reference work containing information on drugs in clinical use worldwide, as well as selected investigational and veterinary drugs, herbal and complementary medicines, pharmaceutical excipients, vitamins and nutritional agents, vaccines, radiopharmaceuticals, contrast media and diagnostic agents, medicinal gases, drugs of abuse and recreational drugs, toxic substances, disinfectants, and pesticides.

13. Micromedex

Micromedex® Solutions is primarily a drug information system and is considered one of the most authoritative resources available. The evidence-based resources are used by clinicians to inform and educate care decisions with the goal to meaningfully improve patient outcomes.

The database contains evidence-based clinical information and recommendations — from need-to-know drug, pediatric, disease, lab, and toxicology information to comprehensive resources for patient education.

The current Micromedex Solutions include comprehensive FDA and EMA approved drug resource with fully referenced, unbiased content covering dosage, pharmacokinetics, cautions, interactions, comparative efficacy, labeled and off-label indications, clinical applications and Martindale: The Complete Drug Reference.

Related databases

ScienceDirect Online
ScienceDirect is a full-text scientific database offering journals, book series, books and reference works. It contains more than 2,500 peer-reviewed journals and more than 11,000 books.

Sciverse Scopus
Scopus is a multidisciplinary database that covers engineering, science, economics and social sciences literature. It also provides access to citation information. Access to the most recent articles and the highly cited articles in Scopus from NTU are also available.

Web of Science
Provides access to abstracts and citations are drawn from leading professional science and social sciences journals. The database also offers access to articles’ cited references which include government publications and patents.

Dissertations & Theses Databases

Dissertations & Theses via Proquest
Dissertations & Theses database provides information about doctoral dissertations and master’s theses. Dissertations published from 1980 forward include 350-word abstracts written by the author. Master’s theses published from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts. (Warning: Due to the size of each document, user is reminded to review his/her search results and select only relevant theses for full-text downloads.) The thesis you need does not have full-text access? Use the Document Delivery Service provided by the Library to get it!

DR-NTU (Restricted access)                                                                                                                                    DR stands for Digital Repository and it comprises student submissions such as dissertations, theses, work attachment reports and final year project reports. NTU staff and students need to login with their NTU network account to access the full text. The full-text collection starts from 1982 but retrospective digitization is not complete yet.