Trip Database Blog

We’ve been playing with our clickstream data – this time visualising it.  We’ve taken a single document Comorbidity and dementia: a mixed-method study on improving health care for people with dementia (CoDem) and mapped all the connected articles.  A connection is made if a user clicks on the above article and then, within the same search session, clicks on any other article(s).  We then use these connections to make some beautiful images, an example is below.  The article above is the big ‘blob’ towards the bottom of the image!

In preparation for the release of our answer engine (inferring clinical questions from the search terms and showing the ‘best’ answer) we’ve been analysing search terms. An area of particular interest are searches with a disease/condition and intervention (or similarly complex search). So, the top five search terms in Trip that follow this pattern are:

• children paracetamol ibuprofen temperature
• child cancer sibling parent
• osteoarthritis glucosamine
• pelvic floor strength
• pressure ulcer prevention

I imagine few could have guessed that list!

But to illustrate the answer engine idea, if someone searches for osteoarthritis and glucosamine we’ll show – at the top of the results – this answer:

“Pooled results from studies using a non-Rotta preparation or adequate allocation concealment failed to show benefit in pain and WOMAC function while those studies evaluating the Rotta preparation showed that glucosamine was superior to placebo in the treatment of pain and functional impairment resulting from symptomatic OA.”

Which is taken from this Cochrane systematic review.