As is evident from their name, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for overseeing drugs that are researched, marketed, sold, etc. in the U.S. As a result, they maintain a host of databases for looking up various types of drug information, most of which can be found on their Drug Approvals and Databases page. I would like to highlight a few of the resources here.

Drugs@FDA: This database contains drugs (brand name, generic, and over-the-counter) approved by the FDA from 1939 onwards and can be searched or browsed. There is also a tool to generate a list of drug approvals for a specific month, which can be useful if you would like to keep up to date on new approvals each month. There are also free Android and Apple apps for this database!

FDA Online Label Repository: This repository contains drug label information submitted to the FDA. You can search by name, ingredient, company name, and more. Note: This database may not work well in Google Chrome.

FDA Drug Shortages: This database contains information about drug shortages and discontinuations, and is updated daily. You can search the database by name or active ingredient, or you can look at specific treatment categories such as Analgesia/Addiction, Anti-Infective, Oncology, etc. Clicking on the “New and Updated” tab allows you to see the newest shortages and their statuses. This database has apps as well!

These three databases are just a few of the many helpful drug resources provided by the FDA. Be sure to explore all of them when you get a chance!

Emily Gorman, School of Pharmacy Librarian, University of Maryland Baltimore

We welcome your comments and suggestions. If you have a resource that you would like to see highlighted please leave us a comment