Archive offers drug industry documents online

Nov. 25th, 2009 by Pia Christensen
Filed under: Health data, Pharmaceuticals, Public records 

In correspondence earlier this month, Kim Klausner, of the University of California, San Francisco Library and Center for Knowledge Management, suggested that reporters should be aware of the Drug Industry Document Archive.

Klausner, the industry documents digital library manager, sent a complete guide to what’s available, the history of DIDA and lots of examples of how reporters and others have used DIDA that is available on HealthJournalism.org.

The archive, available to anyone with access to the Internet, contains about 2,500 pharmaceutical industry documents submitted by “lawyers representing people who file law suits against drug companies and Congressional committees investigating the pharmaceutical industry,” according to Klausner.

William Heisel of the Antidote blog is doing a series of posts that show how the archive can be used to research stories. Heisel’s example uses depositions from a case against Wyeth over side effects of its hormone replacement therapy drugs.

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2 Comments on Archive offers drug industry documents online

  1. A useful resource for those investigating the pharma industry – Croakey on Thu, 26th Nov 2009 11:52 PM

    2. [...] to the American Association of Health Care Journalists for this useful [...]

  2. How the pharma research ’sausage’ is made : Covering Health on Thu, 3rd Dec 2009 2:38 PM

    3. [...] Heisel has posted the latest installment in his series highlighting the spiciest entries in the Drug Industry Document Archive, this time focusing on the cold mechanics of the drug industry’s research paper assembly [...]

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