Uses of online database in the pharmaceutical industry

The pharmaceutical industry in Australia comprises many companies with varying types of data retrieval systems. Databases to maintain internal bibliographic references are common, but in general it is only the larger companies who utilize external online information systems. From approximately 40 online vendors in Australia, only 3 are commonly used in the pharmaceutical industry. These are AUSTRALIAN MEDLINE, DIALOG and ORBIT. The people employed to retrieve information vary from librarians and information scientists to chemists, pharmacists and pharmacologists. This presentation gives an overview of the form of queries commonly asked in the pharmaceutical industry, the databases used to answer these queries and includes the areas of pharmacology, toxicology, technical difficulties, regulatory affairs, marketing support and patents.