This is the fourth in the series exploring how Trip compares with the most popular medical database – PubMed. In relation to a previous comparison we received the following comment recently:

I like this comparison, but I wonder if it would be more meaningful to compare TRIP with a PubMed Clinical Queries search (Clinical Queries – PubMed). I still think TRIP would “win” because of your emphasis on the evidence hierarchy, inclusion of SRs and EB guidelines, but I think it would be a more refined comparison.

ChatGPT describes PubMed Clinical Queries as “…a feature of PubMed designed to help users quickly find evidence-based information relevant to clinical practice. It focuses on filtering search results into predefined categories tailored to specific clinical needs. This tool is especially useful for healthcare professionals seeking high-quality and focused information to aid in patient care.“

So, sounds like more of a fair challenge, so, lets try it on the search migraine prevention. Clinical Queries (CQ) allows you to select different query types so for this test I selected ‘Therapy’ and after that you have two choices – broad or narrow. Broad maximises sensitivity (trying to identify all possible results) while narrow maximises specificity (trying to identify the most relevant articles). Here are the top five for each database:

To try the search for yourself, here are the links:

For the test I will actually use the top ten results for each database and ask ChatGPT to rate them based on clinical relevance, quality of the evidence and recency. The actual prompt used was:

Below are 3 set of results for a search for ‘migraine prevention’. Comment on quality of evidence, recency of articles and applicability to answering questions on the topic. And give an overall view on which database is likely most useful to a busy health professional.

ChatGPT’s comparison:

Another win for Trip….