Developing a Search Engine for Pharmacotherapeutic Information that is Not Published in Biomedical Journals

Objective

To identify publishers of pharmacotherapeutic information not found in biomedical journals that focuses on evaluating and providing advice on medicines and to develop a search engine to access this information.

Methods

Compiling web sites that publish information on the rational use of medicines and have no commercial interests. Free-access web sites in Spanish, Galician, Catalan or English. Designing a search engine using the Google “custom search” application.

Results

Overall 159 Internet addresses were compiled and were classified into 9 labels. We were able to recover the information from the selected sources using a search engine, which is called “AlquimiA” and available from http://www.elcomprimido.com/FARHSD/AlquimiA.htm

Conclusions

The main sources of pharmacotherapeutic information not published in biomedical journals were identified. The search engine is a useful tool for searching and accessing “grey literature” on the Internet.