09.01.08
The National Institutes of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS) has partnered with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to develop a database designed to provide comprehensive label information for consumers and researchers. Abt Associates, Cambridge, MA, a government and business research and consulting firm, received a contract for a pilot study, which will determine the feasibility of developing an online database that would catalogue the labels of dietary supplements sold in the U.S. Currently there is no complete, comprehensive, publicly available and readily accessible Internet source of dietary supplement label information. In this pilot study, ODS is partnering with NLM to modify its existing publicly-available database into a single application called the Dietary Supplement Label Database (DSLD), which will be designed to provide comprehensive label information in a format that is user-friendly for both consumers and researchers. The information included in the database will be determined by federal and stakeholder user groups. If findings from the pilot study demonstrate that such a project is feasible, then ODS and NLM will consider the development of a full-scale application.