Your Input Wanted: DynaMed Plus vs. UpToDate

UpToDate and DynaMed Plus are intended to serve the same purpose: providing evidence-based information to inform clinical care. These resources provide summary information on presentation, differential, diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and prognosis for a wide variety of clinical conditions. 

Why Review These Products? Subscription costs for most journals, databases, and other resources are rapidly increasing. In 2015/2016, various subscription journal, book, and database costs increased from 3% to almost 30% annually. This means we spend more every year just to keep what we have now. UpToDate costs are rising much more rapidly than DynaMed Plus costs (~23% increase per year vs. ~8% increase per year). These increases must be absorbed by the College of Medicine and restrict what we are able to do elsewhere in the library. To responsibly use our funds, we will choose ONE of these two products to continue in 2016/2017 and beyond. 

Cost, of course, is not the only factor. The two resources differ in whether remote access is available (we have it for DynaMed Plus but it is cost-prohibitive for UpToDate). They also differ in how information is presented and sometimes in the actual clinical info and recommendations provided. There are differences in how they generate their evidence topics (i.e., how "evidence-based" their process is) and the transparency of these methods. 

To encourage community input to this decision, we have set up a display in the library lobby (1st floor, Building 4) reviewing some of our perceived the pros and cons of these two products. We've also set up a laptop by the display for quick demoing of the two products. Additional information on pricing and projected price increases are provided with the display.

We encourage everyone to spend some time exploring topics of personal interest in each of the resources, considering factors such as: 

• ease of use
• accuracy of information
• speed of finding answers
• currency of information
• transparency of methods used
• remote access
• value for the pricing 

Both resources are linked from the "Most Used E-Resources" menu on the left side of the library's homepage. Visitors may speak with one of our clinical librarians or the Library Director to learn more about these products and the need to make a responsible choice between them. 

We also request that, after carefully reviewing the two products, you complete our 4-question online survey at http://bit.ly/dyn-up to give us your input. Please do so by June 10, 2016. 

A final decision will be made by considering community input, expert medical librarian review, and budgetary considerations.