Trip Database Blog

Clinical questions frequently form natural clusters – variations on a theme that together reveal a richer, more connected picture of evidence. For example, questions about TSH and lifestyle might include sleep, exercise, diet, stress, and psychosocial factors – each distinct, yet interrelated.

One approach we’re exploring to capture these connections is cluster reviews – analyses that group related clinical questions to uncover overarching patterns in evidence and practice. These reviews would take a bottom-up approach, grounded in real clinical questions asked by health professionals. Unlike traditional top-down reviews that begin with predefined topics or published frameworks, cluster reviews are shaped by the real-world information needs that emerge in clinical settings, offering a practice-driven view of the evidence landscape.

We’re experimenting with an interactive cluster review that brings these related Q&As together into a single, navigable experience. It allows clinicians, researchers, and learners to see how different lifestyle and psychosocial factors intersect, and to identify where evidence is thin or emerging.

The goal is to make evidence engagement interactive, modular, and cumulative – each review builds on previous answers, creating a living, evolving knowledge map rather than static summaries.

You can explore the first prototype, Lifestyle, Psychosocial, and Behavioral Influences on TSH Levels, through the interactive review – and we welcome your feedback on how this could best support your evidence needs. And, to be clear, this is a simple prototype, if we go ahead with this we would work hard to make the design wonderful 🙂

CLICK HERE TO EXPLORE

If you have any specific comments, such as how to improve this, please leave a comment or email me jon.brassey@tripdatabase.com

AskTrip has just reached a remarkable milestone – 5,000 clinical questions answered in under 20 weeks. On its own, that’s an impressive figure. But the real story lies in the contrast with our early work and what this achievement represents for evidence-based healthcare.

From Manual Q&A to the Digital Frontier

Back in 1997, we launched ATTRACT, one of the world’s first evidence-based Q&A services for clinicians. It was followed by the National Library for Health Q&A service – both pioneering efforts, the latter ran until around 2012.

Across those 15 years, our teams of information specialists and clinicians answered around 10,000 clinical questions. Each one required 4–6 hours of careful searching, appraisal, and synthesis – a manual, time-intensive process, but one that had a huge impact on clinical decision-making.

Those services were driven by a simple belief: that busy clinicians should have quick, trusted access to the best available evidence to inform patient care. That belief remains unchanged today.

Trip’s Core Mission: Connecting Clinicians with Evidence

The Trip Database was originally created to support the work of ATTRACT, providing rapid access to high-quality evidence for the team answering clinical questions. Over time, it became clear that Trip could serve a much wider audience – helping clinicians everywhere find reliable evidence efficiently.

From those early days, Trip has always been about one thing: connecting clinical decision-makers with the best available evidence.

Over the years, it has evolved from a focused evidence search tool into a comprehensive evidence ecosystem, helping millions of users around the world find trustworthy answers faster. AskTrip is the latest, and perhaps most exciting, chapter in that ongoing story.

AskTrip: A Natural Extension of Trip’s Mission

AskTrip builds directly on Trip’s foundations but uses a radically different interface – natural language. Clinicians can now simply type a question such as “What’s the best treatment for resistant hypertension in pregnancy?” and receive a clear, concise, evidence-based summary in seconds.

What previously took hours or days of searching can now be achieved almost instantly. Yet the principles that underpin AskTrip are the same as ever: reliability, transparency, and a commitment to evidence, not opinion.

AskTrip doesn’t replace human judgment or the careful reading of full studies – it amplifies access to trusted information when it’s needed most.

A Shift in Scale

The numbers tell the story:

• 10,000 Q&As in 15 years through manual services like ATTRACT and the NLH Q&A service.
• 5,000 Q&As in less than 20 weeks through AskTrip.

That’s not just efficiency – it’s accessibility at scale. Thousands of clinicians have been able to get quick, high-quality answers to their clinical questions, helping improve decision-making in real-world settings.

Looking Ahead

This milestone is more than a statistic; it’s a reflection of how far evidence-based medicine has come – and how technology can help accelerate it without compromising quality.

AskTrip represents the next step in a journey that began nearly three decades ago. The tools may have changed, but the mission remains constant: to connect clinical decision-makers with the best available evidence, as quickly and clearly as possible.

We’re incredibly proud of how far we’ve come – and even more excited about what lies ahead.

We’re excited to share an important update to AskTrip – not quite a version 2, but definitely a strong v1.5. This upgrade builds on what’s working well, while tackling some of the challenges we’ve seen since launch. The result: better answers, more trustworthy evidence, and less noise.

What’s New?

1. More Evidence, More Coverage

AskTrip now considers a wider pool of articles when building answers. This means you’ll benefit from a broader sweep of relevant studies, ensuring that useful evidence doesn’t get missed.

2. Smarter Evidence Extraction

We’ve upgraded both the prompts and the large language model behind AskTrip. These improvements sharpen how the system extracts evidence from research, cutting through complexity to surface the insights that matter.

The payoff? More accurate answers and fewer hallucinations.

3. Improved Quality Scoring

Our enhanced quality score system better balances study design, recency, and relevance. That means you’ll see more reliable evidence, ranked in a way that helps you judge its strength quickly and confidently.

4. Beyond Trip: Smarter Sourcing

Sometimes the evidence available in Trip isn’t enough. With this update, AskTrip automatically extends the search to Google Scholar and OpenAlex when needed – giving you access to a wider world of research without leaving the platform.

Why This Matters

Every improvement we make to AskTrip is guided by one principle: helping health professionals make faster, better-informed decisions. With v1.5, you’ll get answers that are broader in scope, more accurate, and underpinned by higher-quality evidence.

We’ll continue refining AskTrip in response to your feedback, so please keep letting us know what works and where we can improve.

En AskTrip, nuestro objetivo es hacer que la evidencia de alta calidad sea accesible para los profesionales de la salud en todo el mundo, sin importar el idioma. Para nuestros usuarios hispanohablantes, esto significa que traducimos su pregunta al inglés, la procesamos en el sistema de AskTrip y luego traducimos la respuesta nuevamente al español.

Recientemente descubrimos un problema en la forma en que se gestionaban las preguntas en español dentro de AskTrip. Esto ocasionaba dos situaciones principales:

1. La pregunta aparecía en español, pero la respuesta se mostraba en inglés.
2. Tanto la pregunta como la respuesta aparecían en español, pero los términos de búsqueda también se procesaban en español.

El segundo caso era especialmente problemático. Dado que la base de evidencia de Trip está en inglés, realizar búsquedas en español devolvía pocos resultados o, en muchos casos, resultados de muy baja calidad.

Durante el fin de semana implementamos una solución y, desde entonces, no hemos detectado más casos de este problema. Confiamos en que ha quedado resuelto.

Queremos disculparnos sinceramente con nuestros usuarios de habla hispana por esta incidencia. A partir de ahora, deberían notar una clara mejora en la calidad y coherencia de su experiencia en AskTrip.

English Translation: An Apology to Our Spanish-Language Users of AskTrip

At AskTrip, we aim to make high-quality evidence accessible to health professionals worldwide, regardless of language. For our Spanish-speaking users, this means we translate your question into English, process it through the AskTrip system, and then translate the answer back into Spanish.

Recently, we discovered an issue in how Spanish questions were handled within AskTrip. This led to two main problems:

1. The question appeared in Spanish, but the answer was displayed in English.
2. Both the question and the answer were in Spanish, but the search terms were also processed in Spanish.

The second issue was especially problematic. Since Trip’s evidence base is in English, running searches in Spanish returned little – or in many cases, poor – results.

We implemented a fix over the weekend, and since then we’ve seen no further cases of the problem. We’re confident it’s resolved.

We sincerely apologise to our Spanish-language users for this disruption. From now on, you should notice a clear improvement in the quality and consistency of your AskTrip experience.