Developing a search engine for pharmacotherapeutic information that is not published in biomedical journals.

Objective: To identify publishers of pharmacotherapeutic information not found in biomedical journals that focuses on evaluating and providing advice on medicines and to develop a search engine to access this information.
Methods: Compiling web sites that publish information on the rational use of medicines and have no commercial interests. Free-access web sites in Spanish, Galician, Catalan or English. Designing a search engine using the Google "custom search" application.
Results: Overall 159 internet addresses were compiled and were classified into 9 labels. We were able to recover the information from the selected sources using a search engine, which is called "AlquimiA" and available from http://www.elcomprimido.com/FARHSD/AlquimiA.htm.
Conclusions: The main sources of pharmacotherapeutic information not published in biomedical journals were identified. The search engine is a useful tool for searching and accessing "grey literature" on the internet.
(Copyright © 2010 SEFH. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.)