About PubMed Health
PubMed Health specializes in reviews of clinical effectiveness research, with easy-to-read summaries for consumers as well as full technical reports. Clinical effectiveness research finds answers to the question “What works?” in medical and health care.
PubMed Health is a service provided by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).
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Who we are
The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the world's largest medical library. It has millions of books and journals about all aspects of medicine and health care on its shelves. Its electronic services deliver trillions of bytes of data to millions of users every day.
The NLM was founded in 1836 and is part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is a division of the NLM. It creates resources for researchers, particularly large-scale research in human genetics.
The NCBI also provides public access to information through resources like PubMed. PubMed includes abstracts—short technical summaries—of more than 20 million scientific articles in medicine and health.
Our information
PubMed Health is based on systematic reviews of clinical trials. These clinical effectiveness reviews can show what treatments and prevention methods have been proven to work—and what remains unknown.
PubMed Health provides summaries and full texts of selected systematic reviews in one place. The reviews were generally published or updated from 2003. There is also information for consumers and clinicians based on those reviews.
A search on PubMed Health runs simultaneously in PubMed. A filter is used to identify all the indexed scientific articles at the NLM that might be systematic reviews. This search includes articles from before 2003.
Information partners selected by PubMed Health to contribute their clinical effectiveness information are:
- Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (US) (AHRQ)
- Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD)
- The Cochrane Collaboration (CC)
- German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG)
- National Cancer Institute (NCI)
- National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines program (NICE)
- National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment Programme (NIHR HTA)
- Oregon Health and Science University's Drug Effectiveness Review Project (DERP)
- Department of Veterans Affairs' Evidence-based Synthesis Program from the Veterans Health Administration R&D (VA ESP)
England's Behind the Headlines service is from the National Health Service (NHS Choices).
We also use medical encyclopedia and medication information from A.D.A.M. Education and the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists.
PubMed Health is updated when our partners provide new or updated information.
Please see the Help page for guidance on searching PubMed Health and citing PubMed Health pages.
Contact us
To send suggestions, recommendations for new resources and/or updates to existing information, email us at pmh-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
Specific medical advice will not be provided. NCBI and NLM urge you to consult with a qualified physician for diagnosis and for answers to your personal questions.