Updated every day. Latest update:
Let your AI assistant search the medical literature and cite its sources
MedCP connects your AI assistant, for example the Claude desktop app, to 33.8 million biomedical articles, the full text of 8.1 million of them, more than 600,000 clinical trials, medicines and clinical guidelines, updated every day. More than 11 million open-access articles, every one searchable by meaning, not only by keywords. Its answers point to the sources they rely on, with a link to PubMed.
No account and no password: you only need an email address.
You ask
“Does vitamin D supplementation prevent fractures in older adults?”
Your assistant searches the articles, reads the abstracts and the methods of the VITAL trial, then answers
- Searched the articles
- Read the abstracts
- Read the full text: methods
Not when vitamin D is taken alone by generally healthy older adults. In the VITAL trial (25,871 participants), 2,000 IU a day did not lower the risk of fractures compared with placebo (hazard ratio 0.98; 95% CI 0.89 to 1.08) [1]. Its full text adds that participants could keep taking up to 800 IU of vitamin D and 1,200 mg of calcium a day on their own [1]. A Cochrane review of 53 trials found the same for vitamin D alone, and a small reduction in hip fractures when it is combined with calcium (risk ratio 0.84; 95% CI 0.74 to 0.96) [2]. Prevention has been shown in vitamin D-deficient nursing home residents, not in adults living at home [3].
References
- 1.LeBoff MS, Chou SH, Ratliff KA, et al. Supplemental Vitamin D and Incident Fractures in Midlife and Older Adults. N Engl J Med. 2022;387(4):299-309. PMID 35939577Read: abstract and full text (author manuscript)
- 2.Avenell A, Mak JC, O'Connell D. Vitamin D and vitamin D analogues for preventing fractures in post-menopausal women and older men. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014;(4):CD000227. PMID 24729336Read: abstract (no full text available)
- 3.Reid IR, Bolland MJ. Calcium and/or Vitamin D Supplementation for the Prevention of Fragility Fractures: Who Needs It? Nutrients. 2020;12(4):1011. PMID 32272593Read: abstract (full text available, CC BY licence)
33.8 million
Biomedical articles with their abstracts, each linked to its PubMed page. Count of 31 October 2026.
11 million+
Open-access articles, every one searchable by meaning: found even when they use other words than your question.
8.1 million
Full texts, with their figures for 4.7 million of them. Each one comes with its licence.
600,000+
Registered clinical trials, linked to the articles that report them.
What your assistant can do with MedCP
You ask in your own words. The assistant decides which of these to use.
Find articles by meaning
Searches go by meaning, not only by keywords: they find the articles that answer a question even when they use other words. Every one of the more than 11 million open-access articles can be found this way, and new articles a few minutes after each update. Your assistant can also narrow the search by MeSH heading, publication type (randomized trial, meta-analysis, review…), date and language, like PubMed's advanced search.
For example“Find randomized trials of pembrolizumab or nivolumab in lung cancer published from 2020 to 2024.”
Read the abstracts
Every search result comes with its complete abstract. For up to 20 articles at a time, your assistant can also get the full record: authors, journal, date, DOI, MeSH headings and publication type.
For example“Summarize the abstracts of these three articles and compare their results.”
Read the full text
For 8.1 million articles: the whole text, or only the parts it needs, such as the methods or the results, and the figures, such as forest plots and survival curves. Each full text comes with its licence.
For example“Read the methods of the VITAL trial: what dose was given, and which other supplements were allowed?”
Follow a clinical trial
Its record in the trial registry: status, phase, enrolment, dates and sponsor, and the articles published from it, even those that give its number in another registry, such as EudraCT or ISRCTN.
For example“Which articles report the results of the VITAL trial, and how many participants did it enrol?”
Look up a medicine
The information published by the authorities that authorize medicines, such as the FDA in the United States and the EMA in Europe: more than 262,000 US labels and the product information of more than 2,300 medicines authorized in the EU, read section by section, with shortages and recalls.
For example“What does the European product information of apixaban say about patients with kidney disease?”
Read clinical guidelines
More than 19,000 documents that are not in PubMed: practice guidelines, care guides for chronic and rare diseases, vaccination recommendations and assessments of medicines and medical devices, with their full text.
For example“What do the guidelines recommend for pneumococcal vaccination in adults?”
Put the most cited studies first
How often each article is cited, and how that compares with articles of the same field and year. Your assistant can sort a search by citations, or keep only the articles that are free to read.
For example“Find the most cited randomized trials of SGLT2 inhibitors in heart failure.”
Look up MeSH headings
Finds the MeSH heading for a term, with its tree numbers and synonyms, so that searches are precise.
For example“Which MeSH heading covers heart attack?” The answer: Myocardial Infarction, D009203.
Good to know. Searches look in titles and abstracts. Full texts are read one article at a time, for the articles that have one; for the others, your assistant reads the abstract. Some full texts are extracted by machine from a PDF and can miss tables or formulas. Check the licence of a full text before you reuse it. The information on medicines is shown as the authorities publish it: check the label in force in your country. Retracted articles are left out unless you ask for them. MedCP is not run by the organizations that publish the data.
Getting started takes three steps
No account and no password. You only need an email address.
Enter your email address
We send you a link by email. It works once, for 30 minutes.
Open the link and create your key
Your access key is a long code, like a password, that lets your assistant use MedCP. It is shown only once: keep it somewhere safe.
Add the key to your assistant
Step-by-step instructions for your assistant, with your key already filled in. You copy and paste.
Prefer to have someone set it up for you? The instructions page can be printed and handed to a colleague or to your IT department.
Check your email
We have sent a link to .
- Open the email from MedCP, subject “Your MedCP access key link”.
- Click Open the key page.
The link works once, for 30 minutes. No email after 5 minutes? Look in your spam or junk folder, or send the link again.
We have already sent you a link
We have sent several links to this email address, or from your network, in a short time.
Look in your inbox, and in your spam folder, for the latest email from us. Or try again later.
New keys are paused for today
We have reached today's limit of new keys. Please try again tomorrow, after midnight UTC.
In a hurry? Write to [email protected] and we will set you up.
Works with these assistants
After you create your key, we show the instructions for the one you use.
- Claude desktop appRecommendedMac and Windows. The usual choice. Needs Node.js, a free program you install once, and a configuration you paste.
- Claude CodeTerminalIn a terminal. One command to paste.
- Codex CLITerminalIn a terminal. Two short lines to add to its settings.
- Claude API and OpenAI APIDevelopersFor developers who build their own tools. Python examples are provided, and the developer page has the MCP endpoint, the tools and the REST API.
Not yet: ChatGPT, and claude.ai in a web browser. Their connectors need a sign-in method that MedCP does not offer yet. Use the Claude desktop app instead.
Usage limits
A request is one action by your assistant, such as one search. A question usually takes a few: for example one search, which brings the abstracts, then one page of a full text.
- 10,000
- Requests per day
- 60
- Requests per minute
- 100
- Searches with the extra reordering step (rerank) per day
- 1,000
- Pages of full text per day
A page of full text holds up to 20,000 characters, and also counts as one request. Your assistant can read only the sections it needs.
The counters start again every day at midnight UTC. Need more? Write to [email protected].
Questions
Another question? Write to [email protected]. A person reads every message.
What is MedCP?
MedCP is a free MCP server, published by IDENTIQ in France, that lets AI assistants search and read the medical literature. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is the open standard that assistants such as the Claude desktop app, Claude Code and Codex CLI use to call outside tools. Through it, your assistant searches 33.8 million MEDLINE/PubMed articles, reads 8.1 million full texts, looks up more than 600,000 clinical trials, medicines and clinical guidelines, and cites the sources it used with a link to PubMed. Developers can also call it as a REST API: see the developer page.
What is an access key?
A long code starting with medos_ that works like a password for your assistant. Keep it private: anyone who has it can use your daily requests.
Do I need to install anything?
For the Claude desktop app, yes: Node.js, a free program, installed once. The instructions page links to it. Claude Code and Codex CLI need nothing more.
Does it work in ChatGPT, or on claude.ai in a browser?
Not yet. Their connectors require a sign-in method (OAuth) that MedCP does not offer yet. The Claude desktop app works, and so do the Claude and OpenAI APIs for developers.
I lost my key. Can you send it again?
No. We do not keep a copy of your key, only a fingerprint that lets us recognize it. Request a new link with the same email address: you get a new key, and the old one stops working.
What is in the data? Is the full text included?
Articles: every MEDLINE citation from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, with title, abstract, authors, journal, dates, MeSH headings and publication types. More than 11 million of them are open access, and every one of those can be found by meaning. Full texts: about 8.1 million, each with its licence; 4.7 million come from the National Library of Medicine's PMC Article Datasets, with their figures, and 3.3 million more are extracted by machine from open-access copies of the articles. Clinical trials: the registry record of more than 600,000 studies, linked to the articles that report them. Medicines: the information published by the FDA and the EMA, including more than 262,000 US labels and the product information of more than 2,300 medicines authorized in the EU. Clinical guidelines: more than 19,000 documents that are not in PubMed, with their full text. For most articles, how often they are cited and whether they were retracted. Articles without a full text have their abstract only.
How is it different from PubMed or Europe PMC?
The programming interfaces of PubMed (E-utilities) and of Europe PMC search by keywords: an article that answers the question in other words is missed. MedCP also searches by meaning, and every one of its more than 11 million open-access articles can be found that way. Your assistant also gets, through one connection, the abstract with each search result, the full texts section by section with their figures, the trial records, the information on medicines and clinical guidelines. Europe PMC also searches inside full texts; MedCP searches titles and abstracts, then reads the full text of the articles it finds. Neither PubMed nor Europe PMC is involved in MedCP.
Can I reuse the full texts?
It depends on each article's licence, which comes with every full text. CC BY, for example, allows reuse with credit to the authors; other licences allow less. Check the licence before you copy the text into your own documents.
How up to date is it?
New articles and corrections are applied every day, as the National Library of Medicine publishes them, and so are the changes of the trial registry. New articles can be found by meaning a few minutes after each update. Citation counts are refreshed every three months. Every answer gives the date of the data it searched.
What does it cost?
Nothing: MedCP is free of charge. Before any paid plan, key holders get at least 30 days' notice by email, and paid use needs their explicit agreement.
What do you keep about me?
Your email address, the fingerprint of your key and how many requests you make each day, kept for as long as your key is active, then 12 months. Visits to this site are counted without cookies. Details in the Privacy policy.
Is this a National Library of Medicine service?
No. MedCP uses MEDLINE/PubMed data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, which is not responsible for this service and does not endorse it. Nor is it run or endorsed by any other organization whose data it uses, such as ClinicalTrials.gov.
Ready to try it?
Enter your email address, open the link, and follow the instructions for your assistant.