Last week I posted a review of Trip and since then I’ve sent the first set of emails to the advisory board.  This consisted of a list of ideas and issues I’m working on and asked for feedback.  I sent the emails yesterday but already some ideas are generating more excitement than others:

  • Mobile interface.  Two comments sum this up – ‘The doctors are welded to their mobile phones’ and ‘just tried website on my Android and it was dreadful’.
  • Patient interface. I’m working on this with a local university and their patient group.  The patients want to have better access to evidence, but need some support. So, create a ‘stripped down’ interface with features to make it easier to find and interpret the evidence.  I’m hoping we’ll work with Testing Treatments when we realise this feature.
  • Answer engine. If someone searches for ‘acne and antibiotics’ we can infer they’re interested in answering the question ‘are antibiotics useful in acne?’. If so, why not drop in the answer (assuming a robust one is available)?
  • Clustering. We may have a systematic review in our index in the BMJ. Critiques of the same article (DARE, EBM journal, Journal Club etc) may also appear. Instead of having multiple entries, just show the original with links to critiques.

 These are the early ‘leaders’ and liable to change.  But these are all really interesting issues with their own challenges.