FAQ’s

We provide literature searches to support safety & pharmacovigilance activities including 1) Surveillance/Monitoring with Weekly Alerts for signal detection, 2) Documented and comprehensive literature searches for Medical Writing, including clinical, post market, and other requirements (NDA, CER, PSUR, PADER, DSUR, PBRER, PLLR, IACUC etc.), and 3) Ad-hoc Literature Searches for assessing safety signals and for other pharmacovigilance activities.
We also provide literature search support for R&D and business objectives including; Drug Discovery, Pre-Clinical and Clinical Information, Epidemiology Data, Toxicology Data, Animal Health, Author/Key Opinion Leader Research, Competitor Intelligence and Drug Pipelines, RWE, Health Outcomes, Business and Health Economics, Systematic Reviews, Medical Devices, Patent Information.

As a dedicated literature search firm, searching is our focused specialty. We carefully hand-pick all our literature search professionals based on their exceptional technical search backgrounds and highest levels of professionalism and communication skills. Each of our searchers have has at least 10 plus years of corporate experience within big pharma performing literature searching and review. We maintain a stable, consistent and talented team so you are assured of high quality search results. We have been providing literature search services for over 25 years (since 1995).

Contact searches@pharma-bio-med.com or call 1.858.592.9084. Send a brief summary of the question you would like to answer with your literature search. If we have questions or need details beyond what you have provided, we will reach out to you. Also, if the search is for a regulatory inquiry or submission, please let us know so that we can conduct the search accordingly. It is also helpful to let us know if you have a specific deadline or budget, and if you have specific requirements in terms of the format of your search results.

Most searches can be completed in a few days to a week. However, we can work within your deadline and can complete some searches in 24hrs if you communicate with us.

Yes, you don’t need to have any access or subscription to any resources or databases. We have the required access and can perform the searches both on freely available databases as well as paid commercial databases.

Yes, if your company is already setup with database access, we can utilize that access for literature searches on your behalf. We will work with you to notify your database provider and setup permissions and logins accordingly.

Our search report is fully customizable. Generally we provide a summary of the search request, the search strategy, and a listing of the citations for the results we found. This listing can be a word doc, an excel file, or an endnote library.

Yes. We are frequently asked to set up ongoing alerts for projects, and we can also perform an alerts audit to review your search strategies and make sure you are getting accurate information for your current awareness needs.

It depends on what you need for your specific search. For regulatory related literature searches many of our clients prefer to analyze the results themselves. We can also sort the results into higher and lower potential interest groups to aid with the client's review. For literature searches such as systematic reviews, we can provide assistance with the review and analysis of the results.

Yes, we have a team of searchers trained in searching medical devices that understand how these searches differ from searches for pharmaceuticals, and how the regulatory requirements apply for medical devices.

Yes, just let us know what your reporting period is and we will limit the search results accordingly.

Yes, we perform a thorough search in accordance with current regulatory guidance. Additionally, our search report will document both the results and the search strategy so that you have what you need for your submission.

Yes, we have experts that specifically work with animal health related searches e.g. for submission to IACUC regarding their animal alternative research protocol.

Yes. We search both publicly-available and commercial resources for clinical trials, including Clinicaltrials.gov, Citeline Trialtrove and more.

Yes. That is something that we are frequently asked to do, such as review a whole therapeutic field and distill the information down to one or more slides for a high level overview of competitors, etc.

Yes. We identify top researchers in a specific field by utilizing data from patents, literature, grants, etc., including publication history and citations.

We have equal strengths in searching the scientific literature and patents. With more than 25 years under our belt serving from small to Fortune 100 top Pharma, Life Sciences, Biotech and Medical Devices companies, you can be assured of dependable results whether you are looking for scientific literature, patents or both.

Yes. These are areas that require unique background and expertise for searching and we have experts who are adept at handling these types of searches.

We choose the resources based on the nature of the request. For literature searches we often start with Medline, Embase, and Biosis. Others are used depending on the nature of the request. There are databases that are ideal for clinical trials searching, competitive intelligence, safety, toxicology, business related queries, animal health and more. We will work with you to develop an understanding of the question and tailor the databases to each specific request.

Yes, we can help with one-off, ad-hoc projects. We can also help with regular on-going search needs such as monitoring and alerts.

Yes, you can outsource directly to Pharma-Bio-Med. We can accommodate from ad-hoc searching/review to FTE's. Please contact us directly to discuss which one will work better for you.

Yes. We are frequently asked to do so and we are happy to provide additional information to help you to evaluate our capabilities and pricing.

Everything we do for any client is confidential in perpetuity. Some clients provide a company-assigned laptop to use specifically for their work, and we are happy to adhere to any other special procedures that may be required to protect company data. We can sign your non-disclosure agreement or provide you with our standard non-disclosure agreement for you to review and execute.

Each project is different, so we like to review the scope of the project, have the opportunity to ask clarifying questions, and then let you know of pricing ahead of time. There are special pricing arrangements for ongoing volume and commitment. Many of our clients use Pharma-Bio-Med as their one-stop-shop for all their literature searching. Clients with in-house search teams use Pharma-Bio-Med for all their overflow work, and/or specialized searching such as regulatory related.

All literature Search Experts are located in the United States or the United Kingdom.

Clients include pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies.