NLM’s Pillbox and DailyMed Web Databases

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The U.S. National Library Medicine is responsible for two free web drug-related databases that are intended to be used by both consumers and healthcare professionals. Provided as a public service, these databases do not include any pharmaceutical company advertisements and are not marketing tools. Both resources also provide application development support, making the content easily available to computer programers/developers.

1. Pillbox

“The Pillbox website was developed to aid in the identification of unknown pills (oral solid dosage form medications). It combines images of pills with appearance and other information to enable users to visually search for and identify oral solid dosage form medications.” Among other identifiers, Pillbox can even be searched by pill imprint, shape, and color.

Pillbox is one of the largest free databases of prescription and over-the-counter drug information and images, combining data from pharmaceutical companies, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). As of 10/01/19, it includes 8,781 pill images, 33,255 products, and 67,365 records.

2. DailyMed

DailyMed provides high quality information about marketed drugs, both human and animal drugs, via their FDA labels (package inserts). It provides health information providers and the public with a standard, comprehensive, and up-to-date resource of medication content and labeling as found in medication package inserts.

This website contains 112,954 drug listings as submitted to the FDA. (Note: This is not a complete listing of labels for approved prescription drugs.) The website also includes a label archives search where previous versions of labels can be found.

To learn more about these tools or other drug-related databases (like Micromedex or LexiComp Online) provided via the MSK Library, feel free to Ask Us!

Top Five Reasons Why Having an ORCID iD is a Good Thing!

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Open Researcher and Contributor iD (ORCID) is a registry of persistent identifiers for researchers and scholars from around the world. When you register with ORCID, or better yet, with ORCID@MSK, you’ll be assigned a unique 16-digit identifier and a profile page (ORCID record) that you can populate with your Biography, Employment History, Education & Qualifications, Works (publications), Funding information and links to other profile pages.

Why is this a good thing? Here are the library’s top five reasons:

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Aspirin May Extend the Lives of Some Liver Cancer Patients

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Patients treated for the most common type of liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, may benefit from post-procedural aspirin.

Dr. F. Edward Boas

Dr. F. Edward Boas. Photo by Ethan Kavet.

During transarterial embolization (TAE), physicians block blood flow to a tumor or other growth. It is often used in liver cancer patients who cannot have surgery. In a retrospective review published recently by the American Journal of Roentgenology, MSK’s Dr. F. Edward Boas and colleagues concluded that taking aspirin after TAE can lengthen life. The 42 patients included in the review who took the drug averaged 57 months of overall survival; the 262 who did not averaged 23 months.

In an article in Cure Today, Dr. Boas said he aims to follow the retrospective review with a clinical trial. He also noted that due to potential side effects of aspirin, patients need to consult with their doctors prior to taking the drug.