As some of you have surely noticed by now UpToDate is no longer accessible remotely unless you are a current University of Toronto student or resident.  This was a cost driven decision made by UofT Libraries in consultation with the Faculty of Medicine.  For a detailed explanation from the Director of the Gerstein Library, Sandra Langlands please read the following:

UofT Libraries initially had a 3 year license with UpToDate to provide remote access to this product to the University community. About 18 months in, after watching statistics carefully, it was determined that use by our community was much higher than the vendor had expected. The way they count students, residents and faculty to determine the cost for an institution in the US differs from our situation. Thus, it was determined there had been a misunderstanding between the Library and the vendor which resulted in the Library underpaying. The only way we could continue to provide access was to either increase our payment considerably or to reduce the population which had access. The former would have resulted in a cost of almost $400,000. USD per annum for this subscription, which the Library could not afford. As a result, in discussions with the Faculty of Medicine, we opted to chose the latter solution and reduced the user population of UpToDate to UofT students and residents only. Even this will cost considerably more over 2 years than would normally be paid for one product.

Access by students and residents to UpToDate via the Library will continue for the next 2 years. During that time the UofT Library will endeavour to seek some measure of cost sharing with the UofT affiliated hospitals to provide access to residents going forward. Naturally, in discussion with the hospitals libraries and their parent institutions it is probable that the matter of providing access to other members of hospital staff will also arise and be discussed. At this time, as those discussions are not yet underway, I cannot hazard a guess as to their outcome.

In the meantime, you may be aware that access to UpToDate for physicians, is somewhere around $400. for an individual subscription. I understand that individual subscription access provides more flexibility to use some of UpToDate’s additional services around testing, CE, credit accrual, etc. as well as the ability to connect via mobile devices.

I hope the above explains the situation. While the Library would much prefer to be providing access to UpToDate for our entire UofT community and seeks to do so for most resources, price has been the deciding factor in this instance.