Yesterday I received a notice when I tried to access DynaMed on my iPhone – apparently the license will be expiring soon. This morning I contacted the librarian in the university that I work in to request for two registration codes to renew my subscription on both my iPhone and iPad.
To my horror, the librarian said she could only offer me ONE code because almost all the codes have been snapped up by medical students. That got me a little hot and bothered but then again, beggar can’t be chooser. I thanked her and promptly updated the subscription on my iPhone since it’s the device that I carry most often with me.
During the ward round this morning, I instructed a few medical students to look up a condition on their smart-devices and I casually mentioned “Try looking in DynaMed”.
Some students looked at me blankly as if I just spoke Martian! I then asked, “have you not heard of DynaMed”?
One of the student grinned at me sheepishly and said, “I have heard of it, I got the registration code…..(silence)..but I haven’t activated it!”
A few other students nodded in agreement.
After the round, I shot off an email to the librarian relating my experience. That got her hot and bothered.
I felt a little angry inside me because the registration codes are expensive and the university has spent a fortune to procure them but the recipients evidently do not realize the value of these codes that they possess!
I checked on the DynaMed website and here is the annual cost of a DynaMed license:
Physician: USD 395.00
Residence: USD 149.95
Licensed Medical Practitioner: USD 199.95
Student: USD 99.95
DynaMed has been ranked top point-of-care-tool in a number of studies, surpassing even the favourite-among-physicians which is Uptodate!
So, to all my students who have DynaMed registration codes and have not activated their accounts, please do so – because I have a list of your names (and your codes!) and I will track you down for not tapping into this precious resource!
PS: One of you won’t be able to activate your account because your code has been used for my iPad. 
Acutally, the study that you cite is clear that they only looked at if a systematic review was included in a bibliography or not. They even state that the addition of systematic reviews to content is not a sufficient measure of quality of content or rigor of editorial process. The same group earlier stated that UTD was rated higher than Dynamed in both EB Methodology and Editorial Quality (J Med Internet Res 2010; 12(3):e26. PMID 20610379).
UTD routinely evaluates systematic reviews and includes the ones that are judged to be high quality, non-duplicative and clinically relevant after appropriate peer review.
If you actually want to look at a “number of studies” check out the research that has been done on UpToDate: http://www.uptodate.com/home/about/research.html
Dynamed may provide a list of studies related to a search, but it does not provide recommendations at the point of care, which is the goal of UpToDate. This makes Dynamed a completely different type of resource. I don’t see how sifting through 10-20 different articles, (some of which are conflicting) at the patient bedside with a summary that may/may not be there and is written by some unidentified person is considered a “point of care” tool.
Yes, I work for UTD. Feel free to ask questions.
Hi Dustin,
Thank you for dropping in on my blog and leaving a comment. I feel honored to have some one working with UTD here.
What you say is true and I concur although the objective of this article was not to compare between DynaMed and UTD but rather that my students, having been given access to DynaMed (unfortunately the university does not subscribe to UTD), have been apathetic to make use of it and deprived others from gaining access.
That said, personally, I prefer to use UTD – what I liked about UTD, as you readily pointed out, are the point-of-care recommendations, which saves me a lot of time, especially when I need the answer stat!
Unfortunately, for most of us, the annual subscription for UTD is far beyond the means of ordinary folks (physicians included) – USD 499 is quite pricey. I still use UTD on my iPhone (my boss was kind enough to let me use her password) whenever I can – I say this because UTD on the iPhone is, sadly, wifi or 3G dependent and unfortunately, in the hospital that I work in, the internet coverage is appalling. DynaMed, on the other hand can be used offline.
Perhaps UTD might want to consider lowering the fees for people in developing countries?
Cheers!
Jimbo
I am cheering for you that you got an unused code. I would have gotten terribly angry though that the codes were taken up with no intention to use..that’s a little silly..though…ahem…truth be told I kinda do that when searching for article. Click…ooo looks interesting…save…click…ooo looks interesting…save and repeat..I have FOLDERS of articles that I haven’t even glanced at!!!
On the bright side..this at least proofs I’m a Malaysian…which in itself isn’t a very bright thing..LOL
Classic case of kiasu-ism. Reminds me of Malaysians at buffet – pile as much food as possible on own plate, doesn’t matter if didn’t end up eating the food.
I couldn’t agree with you more. And about Malaysians at buffet, when I was a medical student in India, I stopped going for buffet lunch with my fellow Malaysian students because I was so embarrassed by their attitude.
i’ve finally activated and downloaded =))
Good on you. However, you will still be tracked as ‘failed to activate’ by our CSI team.
I got a code. Activated and utilized. But it died after i updated my iOS. So now no more. =(
Hmmm, strange. Did not happen to my iPhone when I upgraded the iOS. Is yours jailbroken?
Yea, my iPad is jailbroken.