Trip Database Blog

A recent review of TRIP in Comprehensive Ophthalmology Update (click here for PubMed entry) was very flattering. Some of the snippets:

“..it is clear that the number of sources included in the database is impressive in both quantity and quality”

“…this is really an exhaustive resource for virtually any clinical scenario you can imagine.”

“The TRIP Database is a remarkable combination of simplicity and expansive depth. It is hard to imagine that a physician looking for evidence-based information on any entity likely to be encountered in clinical practice would ever need another resource other than the TRIP page.”

Another recent article (Click here for PubMed entry) looked at TRIP’s performance compared to a number of other high profile resources. It used an interesting methodology (perhaps strange would be a more accurate description). Basically, it used two main resources to answer clinical questions and then, if the answer was not found in these, the other resources (including TRIP) got used by the clinicians.

In short, TRIP answered more questions than any other single resource. This is made all the more impressive in that TRIP was only used when ‘easier’ questions had already been answered by the two ‘main’ resources.

I’m not sure why but I’ve started using Facebook. I think my profile is available via this link http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=759565005. However, you need to login to Facebook to see some of the stuff and need to be ‘my friend’ to see all the stuff.

We are currently planning our next upgrade to TRIP and we need your help! Let us know via the comments facility below, via the TRIP Database contact form (click here) or e-mailing me. The planned upgrade will go ‘hand in hand’ with a significant improvement in the search algorithm.

BACKGROUND: TRIP has a reputation for offering access to high-quality clinical literature. We wish to retain that reputation.

PROBLEM: Many clinical questions cannot be answered using high-quality material. Therefore, currently, users would need to go to other websites to find their answer. We are exploring the possibility of adding a broader range of material to support enhanced questions answering. However, simply adding lesser-quality material into the main search would ‘dilute’ the quality.

PROPOSAL: To add extra, lower-quality, material into TRIP in such a way as to ensure we retain our high-quality reputation while still enhancing our ability to facilitate clinical question answering. To that end I can see three main possibilities:

1) Auxiliary search: I’d envisaged an initial search to cover the higher quality material. If the user feels they need additional information they move a ‘slider’ (click on image below) to include a wider variety of content. This would sit at the top of the search results.

Pros: Allows users to easily include/exclude content.

Cons: Sliders are not a widely used ‘technology’ and users might not fully understand them.

2) Exclude from core search. This would be to include all the material in the search but only include the core ‘quality’ material in the main search (where all the results are ‘mixed’ together and returned on the first results page after a search). To select the lower quality material a user would need to click on the particular category section.

Pros: Cheap.

Cons: Users might not use the category search therefore never seeing the results.

3) Contingency. We could get the system to carry out a search as outlined in point 2) above. However, if there are less than, say, ten results which are highly textually relevant, the system adds the additional content to help boost the number of relevant results.

Pros: Should work very well, with little user intervention.

Cons: The inclusion of lesser quality material will not be explicit which might impact on our ‘high quality’ reputation.

Alternatively, if you can think of any other solution we’d be delighted to hear from you!

Hurrah!

Things are pretty much back to normal with the search algorithm, so apologies for the poor service. For some reason PubMed has been having problems as well. A poor time for searchers.

This ‘scare’ with the algorithm has further emphasised the need to ensure the best search results possible. TRIP still has work to do on this and it is our priority. We’re hoping to get started on a major overhaul of this by the end of the month.

I was asked to produce a top ten search tips for a librarian (Beryl) in the Wirral (my birthplace) and was happy to help out. She suggested I share the list, so here goes:

1. TRIP is a free resource aimed at delivering the highest quality literature to support clinical practice. As such we focus on quality of content not quantity.
2. When searching using more than one search term tends to get the best results. A search on ‘asthma’ will yield a large number of results while a search on, say, ‘asthma and steroids’ brings back a more focussed set of results.
3. On the results page you can filter the results based on the type of material you’re after e.g. guidelines, systematic reviews etc.
4. TRIP also carries out an automatic search of PubMed using the clinical queries interface. TRIP allows these results to be ‘specialised’ to only return results from core journals from numerous specialities e.g. cardiology, oncology, immunology.
5. The advanced search allows greater flexibility in searching. For instance, you can look for keywords that only appear in the title of a document. You can also combine multiple searches.
6. My-TRIP allows you to record keywords of interest. Then, when TRIP updates the content (monthly), any new material is e-mailed to the user. Registering with My-TRIP also allows users to comment on documents included in TRIP.
7. TRIP supports various different ways of enhancing searches. These include the ability to use brackets, phrase searching (by placing phrase in quotation marks), stemming (e.g. ‘cancer*’ searches for any term beginning with ‘cancer’ e.g. cancer, cancerous).
8. Where documents have conclusions TRIP has attempted to capture them. Where there are conclusions simply click on the blue ‘i’ button. When there is no conclusion this button is ‘grayed out’.
9. The latest version of TRIP includes snippets (small auto-generated segments of the article on interest) these can significantly improve recall of appropriate documents. These can be turned off if they are too intrusive.
10. TRIP also searches two other collections of date medical images and patient information. These can be accessed via the links above the search box.

If anyone can think of any other then let me know! For additional search tips you can visit our more comprehensive list by clicking here.