Turn Your AI Into a Medical Research Assistant

Stop manually searching PubMed when your AI could be doing comprehensive literature reviews in seconds. This MCP server gives Claude and other AI assistants direct access to PubMed's 35+ million biomedical research papers through a clean, developer-friendly interface.

Why Your AI Needs PubMed Access

If you're building healthcare applications, conducting research, or need AI that can cite actual medical literature, you've probably hit this wall: your AI assistant apologizes that it can't access current research or verify medical claims against the latest studies.

This MCP server solves that by connecting your AI directly to NCBI's Entrez API, letting it search, retrieve, and analyze PubMed articles on demand.

What Makes This Different

Structured for AI consumption: Unlike web scraping or manual searches, this returns XML-formatted full text that preserves document structure - titles, abstracts, methods, conclusions - making it much easier for AI to extract specific information and maintain context.

Smart about access limitations: Automatically handles the complexity of what's available (abstracts vs. full text), respects rate limits, and provides clear feedback when content hits paywalls.

Zero-friction setup: Just your email address gets you started. Add an NCBI API key if you need higher throughput (10 requests/second vs. 3).

Real-World Applications

Clinical decision support: Ask Claude to find recent studies on treatment efficacy for a specific condition, complete with methodology analysis and statistical significance.

Literature reviews: Have your AI compile comprehensive research summaries, identifying gaps in current research or conflicting findings across studies.

Fact-checking: Verify medical claims against peer-reviewed research instead of relying on training data that might be outdated.

Research assistance: Generate bibliographies, extract methodology details, or identify key researchers in specific fields.

Integration That Actually Works

The server handles NCBI's authentication requirements and rate limiting automatically. Your AI gets clean, consistent responses whether it's searching for "CRISPR gene editing safety" or retrieving specific PMIDs.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "simple-pubmed": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "mcp_simple_pubmed"],
      "env": {
        "PUBMED_EMAIL": "[email protected]"
      }
    }
  }
}

That's it. Your AI can now search 35 million research papers and access abstracts immediately, with full-text retrieval for open-access articles.

Why This Belongs in Your Stack

Medical AI applications without access to current research are essentially flying blind. This server turns your AI assistant into a research powerhouse that can validate claims, discover recent findings, and provide evidence-based responses backed by peer-reviewed sources.

The 99 GitHub stars and active community show this isn't just useful - it's becoming essential for developers serious about AI applications in healthcare and research domains.

Get it running in under 5 minutes. Your next medical AI query will pull from the latest research literature instead of apologizing for limitations.