The In-House Database — Nicety or Necessity?

Abstract

This paper is based on an intensive analysis of documentary units—the number of elements representing the original document in the documentation process—related to the thromboxane receptor blocker Daltroban. The issues discussed are the number of documentary units (DUs) retrieved in the Boehringer Mannheim in-house database BOELARS (n = 353) in comparison with the number of DUs found in seven leading commercially available biomedical databases (n = 226), the number of unique DUs, the percentage of DUs concerning congress literature, and the occurrence and availability of congress data in the source field. Furthermore, an attempt was made to determine if meeting abstracts could be retrieved and if so, whether there were any (“full length”) proceedings documents following the meeting abstracts. In addition, the ratio between DUs with and without an author's abstract was analyzed. DUs were compared with regard to information on number of patients and drug dosage. The time lag for the input of DUs in the different databases was also investigated. The results of this investigation indicate that a search of commercial databases is not devoid of surprises, and an in-house database is indispensable.