I was recently invited to attend a workshop held by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford.  This wasn’t a formal demonstration of TRIP, it was more an informal chat to allow people to ask about TRIP various aspects of TRIP e.g.

  • How often is the site updated? Answer: most content is weekly or fortnightly and the rest on a monthly basis.
  • What is involved in updating the site? Answer: Most content is automatically added via various clever bits of technology.  However, for a number of sites I still have to visit them monthly and manually add the content.
  • How does the boolean work?  Answer: Use the advanced search to show you – as this builds the boolean for you.

Then, a person who had used TRIP for years said they weren’t aware of this feature.  Over the course of the session people highlighted they hadn’t seen:

It’s an interesting issue/problem.  It’s trying to get the balance right between making features visible and not over-powering.  I’m really not sure how to resolve this!  Possibly create a monthly ‘Feature’ area which would allow me the ability to focus on a given feature. One to ponder!

One very memorable quote was from a clinician who said:

‘before I found TRIP I was ploughing the field with a trowel, now I’m using a tractor’