Computerized information sources in toxicology and their use in a poisons centre

The increasing volume of calls received by a poisons centre, such as the National Poisons Unit, Guy's Hospital, London is placing the present information services under escalating pressure. Recent developments in the technologies used to store and manipulate data have resulted in a number of public and private computerized systems being made available. In order to maximize the benefit of the new technologies to a Poisons Centre Information Service it would be desirable to create an integrated system to link the currently unrelated systems. Such an integrated system would be capable of retrieving bibliographic information from bibliographic files similar to MEDLINE and EMBASE and data from source information files such as RTECS and ECDIN, with the user only having to make one enquiry. This paper examines the current position with regard to computerized information sources in toxicology and discusses how an integrated system might improve the efficiency of a poisons centre's information retrieval service and outlines some of the obstacles to the development of such a system.