In a nutshell it’s a system to support Trip users to obtain answers to their clinical questions. It’s not designed to replace Trip, more like compliment it. You may not have been able to fuller answer your question, be stuck on the meaning of a passage, the nuance of a paper or the meaning of a statistical test.  We’ve developed this powerful solution to harness the wonderfulness of the Trip Community (over 100,000 registered users).

The steps are as follows:

  • If you can’t find the answer in Trip you record your question via the ‘Ask a question’ link.
  • We send it to members of the Trip community who we feel are best placed to answer it. For instance, you may have a question on heart failure – we’d email it to users with an interest in heart failure and/or cardiology.
  • It is anticipated/hoped that at least one of those emailed will answer your question.
  • Quality is important and users will be able to upvote an answer (if they like it) or downvote it if they don’t! People answering the questions will be encouraged to reference their answers.

By contributing to this service as a member of the Trip community you’ll be sharing your knowledge to support healthcare around the globe and creating a system that you too may use if you find yourself struggling for an answer.

The Q&A system falls within our new Trip Learning Environment (Triple) a concept whereby users share and learn – in a non-critical manner – from each other. The Q&A is the first system we’re introducing but others will follow afterwards.

The system is a beta as we’re wanting people to test it to see that it works well and highlight any problems (a beta signifies a non-finished, test version of a feature). This should not be onerous, we simply want you to join up to the system and have an explore. It would be great if you asked a question or responded to a question should you know the answer. The test will be over a month or so and we are not anticipating lots of activity – just enough for people to get a feel for it.

Email me via jon.brassey@tripdatabase.com if you’re wanting to help test it.