Sorry, I mentioned it on twitter but didn’t mention it here! Basically, we rolled out some new features earlier this month!

Search history. This is only available if you’re logged in and records each search you make. Most importantly it allows you to undertake complex combination searches. NOTE: This feature is available to the right of the search button.

Search wizard. This is our rather nifty feature that uses a combination of a PICO search and contingency searching to return a small number of results. It works by toggling terms between title only and text anywhere in the article.

Semantic tools. I’ve blogged about this twice (here and here) which is a sign of how much I rate the technology. Basically, it compares documents textually to see if how they compare. Those that are similar – based on word analysis etc are considered related. There are two main ‘outlets’ for the semantic tools:

  • Related articles page. This allows you to add text (e.g. free-text question, passage from a book/article etc) and it will find related articles. This has many possible uses (see the first post mentioned above).
  • Related articles in the search results. All the semantic analysis has been inspired by my love of the ‘related articles’ feature in PubMed which has been really helpful in finding articles on many many occasions. Now, under each search result, in TRIP, is a ‘Related’ link that shows you semantically similar articles. Why is this helpful? Do a search for colon cancer and this returns many different types of articles (diagnosis, screening, treatment etc). You find an article that you like (e.g. screening family members) you press related and the new results will be closely related and highly likely to be on screening family members for colon cancer.

Oh yes, before Xmas we’re hoping to roll out a new design – a slight upgrade to the current site!