As part of the new launch TRIP will be releasing around 30 specialist search engines, ranging from Allergy to Urology. Users searching the specialist TRIPs will simultaneously search the core TRIP content plus the last 5 years articles from top 10-15 journals in that speciality. But what is the rationale?

We know that restricting searchers to only ‘evidence based’ material (secondary reviewed material) would only answer around 20-25% of the clinical questions. It was for that reason that TRIP added more material (core primary research, eTextbooks etc). Our aim is to allow clinicians to answer their questions using the best available evidence. We do this pretty well with only 15% of our users saying they find the material they’re after less than half the time. Another 19% find information around half the time. So what happens to them? Do we send them to Google? PubMed? both have advantages but generally they’re unlikely to help a busy clinician!

The specialist TRIPs intend to fill the area between the existing TRIP and the abyss that is Google and the full Medline. Take the following example:

Search Term – awareness

  • TRIP – very few relating to anaesthetics.
  • Anaesthetics TRIP – over 200 new results, most related to anaesthetic awareness, large number of the top 20 results pertinent to the topic and from major anaesthetics journals.
  • Pubmed – 47,201 results, non of the top 20 relate to anaesthetics!
  • Google – 111,000,000 results!

The above is a clear example of the superiority of allowing key specialist material into a search. We’re not claiming that it will as clear cut in every search, but there will (generally) be a new chunk of pertinent material. This is just the first step, I have no doubt they’ll evolve over time!