Essential Health Links: Bibliographic Databases, Abstracts and Trials Databases


see also

Key
(Focus on Low-Income Countries) indicates that the site has a specific focus on health information in developing countries.
(French) indicates text in a language other than English.
* This symbol indicates that the site has been recommended as one of the top 20 'General Resources'.

Page Contents

African Index Medicus (AIM)
BIREME: Database Search
Current Controlled Trials
Global Index Medicus
Index Medicus for South East Asia Region (IMSEAR)
Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR)
Indian Medlars Centre
Latin American and Caribbean Literature on Health Sciences (LILACS)
List of Serials Indexed for Online Users
pm2mail
Practical Pointers
PubMed: Multilanguage Search (BabelMeSH)
PubMed Retrieval System (MEDLINE)
SHARED Global SHARing Point Server
Source Resource Library: International Health and Disability
WHOLIS

Listing

African Index Medicus (AIM)  (Focus on Low-Income Countries)  (French, Portuguese)
AIM is an international index to African health literature and information sources. It is a compilation of national databases and includes abstracts of journals, articles, monographs, technical reports and other documents. The project is a joint endeavor of the Association for Health Information and Libraries in Africa (AHILA) and the World Health Organization . The keyword search engine is accessible in English, French and Portuguese. http://indexmedicus.afro.who.int/

BIREME: Database Search  (Focus on Low-Income Countries) (Portuguese, Spanish)
This site contains 13 health-related databases for the Latin American and Caribbean region. The access and search tools are in English, Spanish and Portuguese. http://bases.bvs.br/public/scripts/php/page_show_main.php?home=true⟨=en&form=simple

Current Controlled Trials
 The Current Controlled Trials site is a tool to increase the availability, and promote the exchange, of information about ongoing randomized controlled trials worldwide. It contains two clinical trials resources: ISRCTN Register, a database of randomized controlled trials with an International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) and metaRegister of Controlled Trials (mRCT), an International database combining registers of ongoing randomised controlled trials in all areas of healthcare. The site is a resource of information on research within developing countries and includes all trials approved by the WHO ethics review board. http://www.controlled-trials.com/

Global Index Medicus   (Focus on Low-Income Countries)  (French, Portuguese, Spanish) 
The WHO Global Index Medicus has been developed to complement internationally known indexes such as PubMed (National Library of Medicine, U.S.). This index focuses on the considerable amount of valuable health related documents from outside the major industrialized areas. Published under the auspices of the WHO regional offices, it includes bibliographic information on and, in some cases, full-text access to regionally published health information. http://www.who.int/ghl/medicus/en/

Index Medicus for South East Asia Region (IMSEAR)  (Focus on Low-Income Countries)
IMSEAR is a database of citations and abstracts to articles published in selected journals of the WHO South East Asia Region. The database can be searched by title, author, and subject categories. It is maintained by the WHO Regional Office for South East Asia. http://www.who.int/library/databases/searo/en/index.html

Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR) (Focus on Low-Income Countries)
IMEMR is an international index to Eastern Mediterranean health literature. It is a database of citations and abstracts to articles published in regional journals. The site is maintained by the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region Library Network. http://www.emro.who.int/HIS/VHSL/Imemr.htm

Indian Medlars Centre  (Focus on Low-Income Countries)
This site provides access to IndMED, a bibliographic database of 75 Indian biomedical journals, and MedIND, a portal that contains links to fulltext articles in 38 journals indexed in IndMED. It also includes a database of journal holdings of major medical libraries in India, links to relevant websites and a mirror site for access to MEDLINE databases on the Indian sub-continent. http://indmed.nic.in/

Latin American and Caribbean Literature on Health Sciences (LILACS)  (Focus on Low-Income Countries) (Portuguese, Spanish)
LILACS is a database that contains health related literature published in the region since 1982. It has keyword access to abstracts and citations for articles from 670 regional journals plus documents, books, scientific reports and governmental publications. The database is maintained by BIREME and is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. http://bases.bireme.br/cgi-bin/wxislind.exe/iah/online/?IsisScript=iah/iah.xis&base=LILACS⟨=i&form=F

List of Serials Indexed for Online Users
 This is a list of complete bibliographic information on serials cited MEDLINE (PubMed) and HealthSTAR. The site is maintained by the National Library of Medicine, U.S. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/lsiou.html

pm2mail  (Focus on Low-Income Countries)
pm2mail (PUBMED-TO-EMAIL) is a free software that allows email access to PUBMED and to full-text articles of scientific and medical journals indexed by Medline. This is a useful tool for all professionals with slow access to the Internet. http://www.nongnu.org/pm2mail/

Practical Pointers
Practical Pointers provides 'exit abstracts' of articles from some of the world's core medical journals: New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, British Medical Journal, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Archives of Internal Medicine. http://www.practicalpointers.org

PubMed: Multilanguage Search (BabelMeSH)  (Arabic, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish)
This site is a multi-language search tool for PubMed/MEDLINE. Users can search with Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian or Spanish, medical terms or phrases and will receive citations in English. The National Library of Medicine, U.S. tool still is under development and more languages will be added in the future. http://babelmesh.nlm.nih.gov/

* PubMed Retrieval System (MEDLINE) (Portuguese, Spanish)  
PubMed is a free search tool to the 9 million citations (1965 onwards) in MEDLINE. It is a service of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine, U.S. Users can search by author, journal title, keyword or ID number. The site contains a (simplified) free-text, natural language (English only) query with GSpell spelling checker at askMEDLINE. It contains links to several other NLM databases (Nucleotide, Protein, Genome, Structure, PopSet, Taxonomy, OMIM). Via Bireme, the 1993 to date information is searchable in Spanish and Portuguese. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed

SHARED Global SHARing Point Server  (Focus on Low-Income Countries)  (French, Portuguese, Spanish)
Defined as a Health Information System across languages, across data structures, across continents, the site is divided into three vertical data sources: a database from SHARED network partners by projects and journal articles/abstracts; online journals; and MEDLINE. It contains a multilingual (English, French, Spanish) keyword index. The site is maintained by Scientists for Health and Research for Development, a European based non-governmental organization. http://www.sharingpoint.net/

* Source Resource Library: International Health and Disability  (Focus on Low-Income Countries)
This is a bibliographic database that provides access to over 20,000 records on primary health care and disability in developing countries. It is a collaboration between Healthlink Worldwide, Centre for International Child Health, and Handicap International. The site can be searched by keyword, subject, country and region. http://www.asksource.info/res_library.htm

WHOLIS  (Focus on Low-Income Countries)  (French, Spanish)
WHOLIS is the World Health Organization library database available on the Web. It indexes all WHO publications from 1948 onwards and articles from WHO-produced journals and technical documents from 1985 to the present. WHOLIS contains bibliographic information with subject headings and, for some records, abstracts and, for other records, full text links are available. The directory also is available in Spanish and French. http://www.who.int/library/databases/en/

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Updated: 04 January 2008