Trip Database Blog

We launched in early October and in just over 15 weeks we have attracted 4,000 registered users to TRIP via our My-TRIP offering. This is how long it has taken each 1,000:

• First 1,000 – 15 days
• Second 1,000 – 24 days
• Third 1,000 – 31 days
• Fourth 1,000 – 37 days

There are many advantages to signing up to My-TRIP and these revolve around keeping up to date with the latest evidence, recording your use of TRIP for CPD/CME and proof of learning and access to the TRIP/doc2doc forum. Also, searching TRIP while registered means we pay a proportion of advertising income to Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors without Borders and HIFA2015. For a full list of the advantages of signing up see our list of key features.

So, if you’re not registered, do it now – it’s a powerful tool and it’s free!

I’m currently evaluating a website for a large NHS organisation. I don’t feel I can divulge their name – so apologies if that negatively affects the post.

In the past TRIP has been evaluated using a number of different methods. The first major method was carried out by the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine which resulted in the following publication Using the Turning Research Into Practice (TRIP) database: how do clinicians really search? More recently, when we were internally testing the new TRIP Database site the wonderful people at Minervation did some usability testing, which involved videoing a number of people trying to do tasks on TRIP.

I was contacted by the organisation as the senior managers were concerned that the site was no longer fit for purpose. While they felt the content was great, the findability was suspect.

It’s been a great experience, we’ve really got stuck into the web-stats, got lots of user feedback and we’re seeing a very consistent picture. The results might not be a surprise to the organisation (although there will be a few strong recommendations they’re not expecting) but it should give them the evidence they need to plan significant changes to the site.

The most important lesson from the whole process – for me – is that the internet is so important for communication, regular evaluation is essential to ensure your message/output is getting the exposure it deserves.

TRIP have been using the publications from the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare for years. We’ve used two principle outputs, their guidance and their clinical Q&As. The latter have been produced by the Clinical Effectiveness Unit (CEU). But, the CEU had a problem.

Basically, there was a large repository of clinical Q&As but members of the Faculty were not finding the search particularly useful. So, instead of looking at previous answers they went straight to the human-powered Q&A service – which wasn’t ideal.

So, we were delighted when they approached us to help improve their search. The new search has just been launched and can be accessed via this link. For specialist information on all things sexual and reproductive health orientated, you’d be hard pressed to find a better resource.

TRIP has been interested in education for a while and the new site saw a new feature added ‘Use as CPD’. This allows a user to view an article in ‘CPD mode’; this results in the article being opened with a top bar with 3 questions:

• Why am I exploring this area?
• What have I learned?
• How will I change my behaviour?

See image below to help understand what we do!

The idea is that health professionals record their reflections on the paper and this is then stored in their educational eportfolio.

As with many innovations things started slowly but I’m now delighted to report that it’s being used heavily and it’s looking great.

What interests me is the middle questions ‘What have I learned’, wouldn’t it be great if this learning could be shared?