Grateful Med®

Thousands of new books and articles in biomedicine are published every month. How can a health professional or investigator easily locate literature relevant to a particular area of patient care or research?

Since the early 1970's, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has made searching the biomedical literature faster and easier by providing online information retrieval on the MEDLARS®, (MEDical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System) family of databases. MEDLINE® -- NLM's premier database - has over 7 million citations to biomedical articles and is searched more than eighteen thousand times a day.

In order to make searching even easier and provide a user-friendly way to use the MEDLARS system, NLM, in 1986, developed a software package called Grateful Med. The simplicity and efficiency of searching with Grateful Med have made it immensely popular -- more than 50,000 copies of the software have been sold since its introduction.

Grateful Med is available for the IBM PC or compatible personal computers (Version 6.0, released in May 1992) and for Apple Macintosh computers (Version 2.0, released in spring 1993).

Document Ordering

The "Loansome Doc®" feature of Grateful Med can be used to order full-text articles you select from the references you retrieve in your searches. This feature is made available by a medical library in your region with which you set up an agreement for this service.

How It Works

To begin your search, Grateful Med provides an input screen for the database you choose to search and helps you select appropriate search terms. (You may enter terms of your own choosing or browse and select from over 16,000 terms from NLM's controlled vocabulary known as MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). Any combination of terms may be selected.

You then construct your search by entering relevant terms or perhaps an author's name or both. Terms selected from the MeSH display will be automatically transferred to the Input Form Screen as shown in the example below. Once the terms have been selected, you decide whether or not to retrieve author-generated abstracts (available with 65% of MEDLINE citations), and finally instruct Grateful Med to run the search. (The cost of using Grateful Med tends to be low in part because selecting the search terms is done before connecting to the NLM computer.)

Grateful Med will then connect to the NLM computer and transmit the search commands. After it connects to the NLM host computer which carries the databases, it runs the search and downloads the resulting citations onto your computer disk. You can stop the downloading of references at any time.

After downloading is finished, and you are no longer connected to the NLM computer, Grateful Med presents each citation for review. The citation includes the authors' names, the title of the article, and information about the source of the article (journal, volume, date, page numbers, etc.). The abstracts (if you selected to retrieve them) and the MeSH subject headings may also be displayed. Citations selected as relevant can be printed on a printer, or written to a file which you designate. Grateful Med can also analyze the citations selected as relevant and suggest terms from MeSH that may be helpful for future searches.

Hardware/Software Requirements

Grateful Med requires:

IBM PC or compatible

Macintosh

Other requirements

In order to access the MEDLARS system using Grateful Med a user must have a User ID code and password on the MEDLARS system. One method of obtaining a User ID code and password is to use the application system available on the Grateful Med Bulletin Board. Grateful Med can connect you automatically or you can set your own telecommunications software for 8 data bits, 1 stop bit and parity=none and dial 1-800-525-5756. (Please do NOT use the Bulletin Board to request a User ID code if you have already submitted or plan to submit the printed form of the application.) An application form for the User ID code and password is included with Grateful Med or you can request an application form by contacting:

MEDLARS Management Section
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20894
Tel: 1-800-638-8480 If you decide to use the printed form, the application should be completed and mailed to the MEDLARS Management Section. The processing of this application takes approximately one week from receipt. You will be sent the User ID code and password as well as a list of network phone numbers from which you can select local access numbers.

Used as a Teaching Tool in Schools

Many medical, nursing, and dental schools have introduced classes in information retrieval incorporating Grateful Med as a literature-searching tool. The National Library of Medicine will provide access to MEDLARS searching for students at reduced rates.

Attention Systems Designers

Grateful Med includes a "Search Engine" which will permit those who are creating customized information systems or artificial intelligence programs to include the Grateful Med search capability.

For example, an artificial intelligence information system developed at NLM (AI/RHEUM) utilizes the Grateful Med search engine in its software to automatically retrieve references and abstracts pertinent to the question at hand.

Costs

With the exception of CHEMLINE and TOXLIT, all databases accessible by Grateful Med are charged at the rate of about $18/hour. The average cost of a Grateful Med search of these files is between 1 and 2 dollars.

Because NLM pays royalties for the use of data in CHEMLINE and TOXLIT, the charge for access to these databases is considerably higher.

How to Order

Grateful Med is sold in the United States and Canada by the National Technical Information Service for $29.95 pre-paid. Non-prepaid orders, purchase orders, etc., require $7.50 extra. Orders for Grateful Med may be placed to National Technical Information Service using the Grateful Med Bulletin Board (number provided above.) A User's Guide and an application form for a User ID code to MEDLARS is also included in the package. Each copy comes with a separate tutorial program called "How To" which provides interactive instruction in computerized literature searching with Grateful Med. To order, write or call:

National Technical Information Service
U.S. Department of Commerce
5285 Port Royal Road
Springfield, VA 22161
Tel: (703) 487-4650

Order number for IBM version: 

PB92-105444/GBB

Order number for Macintosh version: 

PB93-502433

(Phone orders will be accepted for credit card or deposit account orders only.)

If you have questions about the Grateful Med program, please contact MEDLARS Management Section (see phone number and address above).

Databases Available:

A Grateful Med user can select from a number of databases to search:

AIDSDRUGS

Subject: Substances being tested in AIDS-related clinical trials

Type: Factual

Coverage: English language; potential AIDS-related therapeutics

Updates: Monthly; the file contains over 100 records

AIDSLINE (AIDS Information onLINE)

Subject: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and related topics

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: All languages; publications from 1980 to present

Updates: Weekly, with about 1,000 new citations added each month; the file contains about 68,000 records

Document Types: Journal articles, government reports, letters, technical reports, meeting abstracts/papers, monographs, special publications, theses, books and audiovisuals

AIDSTRIALS (AIDS Clinical TRIALS)

Subject: Clinical trials of substances being tested for use against AIDS, AIDS-related complex (ARC), AIDS-related opportunistic diseases, and HIV infection

Type: Factual and referral

Coverage: Active and closed trials

Updates: Biweekly; the file contains over 400 records

AVLINE (AudioVisuals onLINE)

Subject: Biomedical audiovisual materials and computer software

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: Primarily English language items from the United States; all audiovisuals and computer software cataloged by NLM since 1975

Updates: Weekly; the file contains about 24,000 records.

Formats: Motion pictures, videocassettes, slide/cassette programs, filmstrip/cassette programs, and computer software

BIOETHICSLINE (BIOETHICS onLINE)

Subject: Ethics and related public policy issues in health care and biomedical research

Type: Bibliographic citations

Updates: Bimonthly, with about 3,000 new citations added each year; the file contains about 35,000 records

Document Types: Journal articles, monographs, analytics (chapters in monographs), newspaper articles, court decisions, bills, laws, audiovisual materials, and unpublished documents

CANCERLIT (CANCER LITerature)

Subject: Major cancer topics

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: Primarily English language items. Comprehensive and international scope since 1976; some citations were published as early as 1963

Updates: Monthly, with about 7,000 new citations added each month; the file contains about 900,000 records

Document Types: Journal articles, government reports, technical reports, meeting abstracts and papers, monographs, letters, and theses

CATLINE (CATalog onLINE)

Subject: Bibliographic records covering the biomedical sciences

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: All languages; virtually all of the cataloged titles in the NLM collection, from the fifteenth century to the present

Updates: Weekly. The file contains about 700,000 records

Document Types: Primarily monographs, but also includes records for serials, monographic series, audiovisual series and manuscripts

ChemID (CHEMical IDentification)

Subject: Dictionary of chemicals

Type: Factual

Updates: Quarterly; the file contains about 268,000 records

CHEMLINE (CHEMical dictionary onLINE)

Subject: Dictionary of chemicals

Type: Factual

Updates: Bimonthly. The file contains about 1.1 million records

Clinical Alerts

Findings from NIH-funded clinical trials are released periodically as Clinical Alerts. When a Clinical Alert has recently been released Grateful Med will notify you after completing your search. You may then instruct Grateful Med to connect to the NLM computer to retrieve a summary of the Alert. Clinical Alerts are stored in a new database called ALERT. Full-text copies of Clinical Alerts can also be ordered using Loansome Doc.

DIRLINE (Directory of Information Resources onLINE)

Subject: Directory of organizations providing information services

Type: Referral

Coverage: Primarily the United States, with some coverage of international organizations

Updates: Quarterly; the file contains about 14,000 records

HEALTH (HEALTH planning & administrations)

Subject: Non-clinical aspects of health care delivery

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: Primarily English, and some French and German language items; publications from 1975 to the present

Updates: Monthly, with about 5,000 new citations added each month; the file contains about 625,000 records

Document Types: Primarily journal articles

MEDLINE (MEDlars onLINE)

Subject: Biomedicine

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: All languages; publications from 1966 to the present. Recent references are contained in the current file (MEDLINE); segmented backfiles (currently BACK85, BACK80, BACK75, and BACK 66) contain older material.

Updates: Weekly, January through October and monthly, November and December; about 30,000 new citations are added each month. The file contains about 7 million records. The citations for each monthly update are also searchable in a separate file called SDILINE (Selective Dissemination of Information onLINE) for those who need only the most recent literature.

Document Types: Articles from more than 3,600 international biomedical journals (some chapters and articles from selected monographs are found in earlier years).

PDQ (Physician Data Query)

Subject: Advances in cancer treatment and clinical trials

Type: Factual and referral

Coverage: United States, Canada, and Western Europe; current

Updates: Monthly

SDILINE (Selective Dissemination of Information onLINE)

Subject: Biomedicine

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: All languages. Contains citations from the most recent complete month in MEDLINE, including all citations in the forthcoming printed edition of the monthly Index Medicus.

Updates: Monthly, with about 30,000 new citations each month

Document Types: Bibliographic citations to journal articles from approximately 3,600 biomedical journals published in the United States and abroad

SERLINE (SERials onLINE)

Subject: Biomedical serial titles

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: All languages; serials published from 1665 to the present

Updates: Monthly. The file contains about 79,000 records

TOXLINE (TOXicology Information onLINE)

Subject: Toxicological, pharmacological, biochemical and physiological effects of drugs and other chemicals

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: Primarily English language items; international coverage The database has been segmented: pre-1965 to 1980 material is found in TOXLINE65, and 1981-forward citations are found in the TOXLINE file.

Updates: Monthly, with about 10,000 new citations added each month; the file contains about 1.8 million records

Document Types: Journal articles, monographs, technical reports, theses, letters, and meeting abstracts, papers and reports

TOXLIT (TOXicology LITerature from special sources)

Subject: Toxicological, pharmacological, biochemical, and physiological effects of drugs and other chemicals

Type: Bibliographic citations

Coverage: Primarily English language items; international coverage. The database has been segmented: pre-1965 to 1980 citations are found in TOXLIT65, and 1981-forward citations are found in the TOXLIT file.

Updates: Monthly, with about 10,000 new citations added each month; the file contains about 1.65 million records

Document Types: Journal articles, meeting papers, monographs, patents, TOXNET (TOXicology data NETwork). As part of the MEDLARS system, TOXNET is a computerized collection of files on toxicology, hazardous chemicals and related areas. TOXNET files currently accessible with Grateful Med include:

CCRIS (Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information System)

Subject: Chemical carcinogens, mutagens, tumor promoters, and tumor inhibitors

Type: Factual

Updates: Continuous; the file contains over 3,600 records

HSDB (Hazardous Substances Data Bank)

Subject: Hazardous chemicals; toxic effects, environmental fate, safety and handling

Type: Factual

Coverage: Data is derived from a core set of standard texts and monographs, government documents, technical reports and the primary journal literature.

Updates: Continuous; the file contains about 4,400 records

RTECS (Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances)

Subject: Potentially toxic chemicals

Type: Factual

Updates: Quarterly; the file contains about 115,000 records

TRI (Toxic chemical Release Inventory) series

Subject: Annual estimated releases of toxic chemicals to the environment and amounts transferred to waste sites

Type: Factual

Coverage: Currently, industrial submissions to EPA for the reporting years 1987, 1988, 1989 and 1990

Updates: New file added annually; TRI87 contains about 80,000 records; TRI88 contains about 87,000 records; TRI89 contains about 86,000 records, TRI90 contains about 84,000 records.

NLM HyperDOC / Grateful Med FactSheet / April 1994