Trip Database Blog

Our guideline scoring system is nearly a year old and it’s been well received by all types of Trip users. Over time we add new guideline producers and these scores are added to the system.

We are in the process of adding ten new guidelines producers and it’s really disappointing to see most of them scoring really low! As a reminder this is how we score guidelines (at the publisher level, not individual guideline level):

• Do they publish their methodology? No = 0, Yes = 1, Yes and mention AGREE (or similar) = 2
• Do they use any evidence grading e.g. GRADE? No = 0, Yes = 2
• Do they undertake a systematic evidence search? Unsure/No = 0, Yes = 2
• Are they clear about funding? No = 0, Yes = 1
• Do they mention how they handle conflict of interest? No = 0, Yes = 1

Of the ten new publishers we could find no information on their methodology, most didn’t use GRADE and we have no idea about the search. Funding is most frequently mentioned and their is no way of knowing how they deal with conflict of interest. A number highlight potential conflicts but not how this is managed – in which case the publisher gets a zero score for that element.

It does make me wonder how users of the guidelines feel? I think the answer is, and this is a worry, that many won’t care or consider the implications. How can you be confident that the guideline you’re using has been produced in an unbiased manner? In short the answer has to be faith, faith in the publishing organisation. This authority bias is problematic for many reasons.

In short, guideline publishers, please be more transparent with your processes, it shouldn’t be difficult…!

EDIT: Mock-up (mentioned below) is available to view here.

Trip adds loads of great evidence every month and this idea relates to better presenting this new evidence for users. We have a current way of doing this, which is to show it as a set of search results:

Above is the latest evidence for Primary Care!

We’ve been wanting to improve this for a long time but, with the advent of LLMs, the time might be right! So, instead of simply listing them as a set of results we could, for clinical areas (such as primary care, oncology, gastroenterology) create specialist ‘journals’ for each topic e.g. Trip Oncology Insights or Trip Clinical Evidence Review: Cardiology.

For each clinical area we would select 20-30 of the best/most important articles that month and summarise them to allow for easy reading (with link-outs to the full-text) with the option of seeing all the remaining articles via the search results method or possibly some visualisation like this to allow for easy identification of articles in your particular interest:

I’ve asked our designer to mock up what this might look like, I’ll share when we have that. EDIT: Mock-up is available to view here.

At Trip, we continuously update our database with thousands of new articles each month, prioritizing the inclusion of high-quality evidence such as guidelines and systematic reviews. Our ‘Latest’ feature is designed to present these recent additions in a user-centric manner, tailored according to individual profiles. This customization occurs in two primary ways:

• Clinical area: For users with specific clinical interests noted in their profiles, such as Gastroenterology, we curate and list the most recent, relevant evidence in that field. (Click here to explore the latest articles in Gastroenterology).
• Personalised Topics: Users have the option to highlight particular topics of interest within their profiles. Based on these selections, we actively search for and recommend new articles that align with these specified interests, such as research on bipolar.

To ensure our users remain informed of the latest evidence, we distribute a monthly email containing a direct link to these updated resources. This link is accessible at any time, allowing users the flexibility to explore the latest findings at their convenience. While this feature is frequently utilized and appreciated by our community, we believe there are opportunities for enhancement to further enrich user engagement and satisfaction.

At the top is a list of 5 ‘key’ documents and below that a list of recorded search terms and/or clinical areas of interest. If you click on a link it takes you to a page of search results – the results being a search for the topic for content added that month:

Recognizing the current approach as ‘sub-optimal’—a diplomatic term for inadequate—we are in the process of re-evaluating this feature. It’s evident that users have a strong desire to access the most recent evidence related to their specific areas of interest, and we acknowledge the need for improvement in meeting this demand. We highly value your feedback and encourage you to share your insights and suggestions either through the comments section or by directly emailing me at jon.brassey@tripdatabase.com. This initiative is part of our ongoing commitment to enhance user experience and optimize our services for better search engine visibility and user satisfaction.