An Evaluation of Citation Counts, Search Results, and Frequency of Updates in DynaMed® and UpToDate®

Abstract

This study examines two point-of-care products: DynaMed® and UpToDate®. These resources were evaluated based on four criteria: search result counts, search result answers, reference counts, and currency of updates. The results of the study suggest that of the four areas evaluated, two indicate a statistical advantage of one database over the other. DynaMed contained updates that were more current, and UpToDate had a more significant total number of references used in a topic. The other two criteria, of initial search result counts and if there was an exact answer to the clinical question, did not produce a statistically significant difference.

KEYWORDS:

• Dynamed
• evidence-based medicine tools
• point-of-care resources
• product comparison
• UpToDate

The authors thank Dr. Xiangming Fang, East Carolina University, Biostatistics Department, for his assistance in analyzing these data.