From Serum Cholesterol in Elephants to Morbidity in Nepal: An Empirical Analysis of 6,729 on-Line Searches at Boehringer Mannheim Gmbh

Abstract

Boehringer Mannheim (BM), a research-based pharmaceutical company in Germany, is active in research and development, production, and marketing and sales of pharmaceutical products, diagnostic devices, and biochemicals. The Medical Information Department of BM is responsible for both the documentation of published literature pertaining to BM pharmaceutical products and the dissemination of relevant information.

Objective: This study analyzes the on-line searches carried out in the information department at BM between 1989 and 1993.

Material and Methods: Six thousand seven hundred and twenty nine on-line searches processed between 1989 and 1993 in the Medical Information Department in Mannheim were analyzed quantitatively with respect to the number of searches, the turnaround time for a search request, the departments ordering search requests, the number of databases searched, the databases used most often, and the role played by the in-house database. As for quality, the nature of the topics searched and the discovery of any trends or focuses were investigated.

Results: The number of searches carried out increased until 1992, then a decrease from 1,611 in 1992 to 1,500 in 1993 took place. The median turnaround time for a search request was two work days (arithmetic mean: 3.4 work days). Marketing was the department that ordered the most searches in the past. The average number of databases used for one search increased from 2.5-3.9 over the five years analyzed. The database most often used was the in-house database BOELARS (BOEhringer Mannheim Literature Analysis and Retrieval System). The main topics searched were related to drugs, endogenous compounds, diseases, and therapies. Many of these searches, however, were further refined by and restricted to a great number of different aspects. Overall, the analysis showed a trend toward a decrease in the total number of searches, going along with a more complicated and/or time-consuming character of the remaining searches.

Conclusion: The results suggest a shift from a quantitative increase toward a qualitative rise in workload. Qualifying the staff of the information department is a more important task than ever before.

Keywords

Biomedical on-line databases On-line searches Turnaround time Topics searched Focus of activity

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