Open AccessGrateful Med: Direct access to MEDLINE for health professionals with personal computers
Author(s) -
Josephine L. Dorsch,
John G. Faughnan,
Betsy L. Humphreys
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
information services and use
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1875-8789
pISSN - 0167-5265
DOI - 10.3233/isu-220147
Subject(s) - medline , national library , health professionals , medical library , health care , medicine , medical education , library science , world wide web , computer science , political science , law
Donald A.B. Lindberg M.D. arrived as Director, U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) in late 1984 with the intention of implementing a physician-friendly interface to MEDLINE, a prime example of his interest in making NLM information services more directly useful in medical care. By early 1986, NLM’s Grateful Med, an inexpensive PC search interface to MEDLINE useful for health professionals, had joined the group of end-user systems for searching MEDLINE that emerged in the 1980s. This chapter recounts Grateful Med’s rapid iterative development and the subsequent campaign to bring it to attention of health professionals. It emphasizes Lindberg’s role, the challenges faced by those introducing and using the interface in a pre-Internet world, and some longer-term effects of the effort to expand health professionals’ use of MEDLINE during the decade from 1986 to 1996.