BMJ 2001;323:1437-1438 ( 22-29 December )

Editorials

Britain's gift: a "Medline" of synthesised evidence

Worldwide free access to evidence based resources could transform health care

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

America's two greatest gifts to the world are jazz and Medline. Now the British government has the chance to match Medline by funding universal free access to what might be described as "a Medline of synthesised, reliable, and up to date evidence." This could be even more useful to clinicians and patients and has the potential to change health care across the world.

Medline is an electronic index of nearly 4500 journals from over 70 countries compiled by Washington's National Library of Medicine. It has been available online since 1971. Later, Hilary Clinton, then America's first lady, announced worldwide free access to Medline through the internet (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/). Since then the number of people using it has increased exponentially, and many of them are patients. There is no better free starting point for finding high quality medical information.

But a search of Medline may be frustrating. Although Medline often includes abstracts and . . . [Full text of this article]
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Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Time for a Change
Ned Hoke OMD,L.Ac.
bmj.com, 21 Dec 2001 [Full text]
Britain's gift: a "Medline" of synthesised evidence
Ian Needleman
bmj.com, 21 Dec 2001 [Full text]
Department of Health facilitates free access to social care database
Mark Watson
bmj.com, 21 Dec 2001 [Full text]
Clinical Evidence
J David Bruce, et al.
bmj.com, 24 Dec 2001 [Full text]
Free access to clinical data by Britain
Pallab Chatterjee
bmj.com, 25 Dec 2001 [Full text]
The Commonwealth of Learning
Adriano PERIS
bmj.com, 31 Dec 2001 [Full text]
Multinational funding?
Fiona McLean
bmj.com, 2 Jan 2002 [Full text]
"Free" information
James S Smeltzer, MD FACOG
bmj.com, 3 Jan 2002 [Full text]
In full support of a freely available integrated knowledge service
Fiona Godlee
bmj.com, 8 Jan 2002 [Full text]
In respect for British knightliness
Takeo Saio, et al.
bmj.com, 11 Jan 2002 [Full text]
Long live British generosity
Padmanabhan Badrinath
bmj.com, 25 Jan 2002 [Full text]
BMJ's gift should be to advertise clinical trials …such as the MRC CRASH Trial
Ian G Roberts
bmj.com, 9 Feb 2002 [Full text]
Re: Clinical Evidence
Philip R Vaughan
bmj.com, 8 Apr 2002 [Full text]
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