The latest version of TRIP is out there and after 24 hours appears stable! So, what’s new:

  • New content. We’ve merged the former specialist search engines with the main TRIP which means TRIP searches the old content plus a core collection of 300 of the top clinical journals. We’ve also introduced a new type of content ‘News’.
  • Evidence slider. TRIP has always been keen to allow users to easily answer their questions using the best available evidence. The evidence slider allows user to easily select the level of evidence they require.
  • New design. Using a separate design agency and extensive usability testing (thanks Minervation) we have radically overhauled the site, making it more user friendly and simply better looking! We’ve even got a new logo.
  • Improved algorithm. The evidence slider has allowed us more freedom to enhance the algorithm, making the results even better than before.
  • Advanced search. This has been completely overhauled and should now work and work well!
  • Speed of search. We’ve dramatically improved the speed to TRIP by improving the way TRIP works and the extensive use of caching.
  • Better guideline filtering. As suggested by a number of people we’ve increased the number of guideline categories (from 3 to 5) and improved the labelling of guidelines from the USA (previously they were simply down as National Guidelines Clearinghouse.
  • CPD. Users will now be able to view articles in ‘CPD mode’ allowing them to easily record their reflecting on the article. This can then be stored in their ePortfolio (available via My-TRIP).
  • Export of records. Another popular request is to allow users to select articles of interest and then export them either via e-mail or as a file. The new TRIP supports this.
  • TRIP fails. Most search engines (medical or general) let their users down. Basically, a user can’t find what they’re after! To overecome this we’ve devised a number of solutions. Firstly, we’ve have provided a link to the American SumSearch with the same search carried out in TRIP reflected in the link to SumSearch. Secondly, the search on TRIP is sent to Google and the Google results are returned on the same results page as TRIP.
  • doc2doc forum. We have teamed up with the BMJ’s community forum doc2doc to provide an outlet for unanswered questions. If you’re a health professional and can’t find what you’re after, use the forum and someone may well help!
  • Background knowledge boxes (BKB). For our more common searches we’ve created BKBs which link out to core textbook-style content. This has been highlighted as useful as it can contextualise some of the research found in the main part of TRIP.
  • Medical images. TRIP has had medical images for years, but they’ve been badly represented and they weren’t particularly prominent. We’ve enhanced our coverage (now over 100,000 medical images), enhanced their display and introduced a sample of results on the main results page. NOTE: The medical images are currently being edited to remove some erroneous images, this will take a few months.
  • Community noticeboard. We’re excited by this as it allows our users to post notices of interest to other users. If you have a conference, job advert, volunteering opportunity, trial enrolment etc let other users of TRIP know (currently that’s around 35,000 visits per day). You can even target the adverts e.g. a conference on cholesterol could be targetted to those carrying out cardiology related searches. We’re not sure how this will develop, but we think it’ll be big!
  • My-TRIP. Users signing up to My-TRIP will be able to use the CPD functionality, create auto-searches of TRIP and search history. In addition we’ll be giving a proportion of our advertising revenue from those signed-in to My-TRIP to Médecins Sans Frontières and HIFA2015.

There’s probably more – but that’s enough for one post!