AskTrip turns one today. And we’ve released a huge new upgrade to the site

In its first year, AskTrip has answered more than 20,000 clinical questions – which tells us something important: health professionals want fast, transparent, evidence-based help with the questions they actually face.

To mark the anniversary, AskTrip Q&As are unrestricted for free users until the end of July. It is a good moment to try the new version.

Because a lot has changed.

Tackling EBM wallpaper and intent drift

Two problems kept appearing in user feedback of AskTrip answers.

The first we came to call EBM wallpaper: answers that contained familiar evidence-based language, but did not always get sharply enough to the heart of the question. Evidence-shaped, but not always as useful as it needed to be.

The second was intent drift: where the answer subtly moved away from what the user had actually asked – particularly when questions were complex, ambiguous or clinically messy.

We have substantially reworked the prompts and answer workflow to address both. The goal is to better understand the clinical intent, stay closer to the question, and produce answers that are more directly useful.

From one search to three

AskTrip is only as good as the evidence it finds.

Originally, it used a single lexical search. It now uses three complementary approaches:

  • two lexical searches, operating on different assumptions and strategies
  • a vector search, to surface conceptually relevant material that may not use the same wording as the question

This is particularly important for real-world clinical questions, which are often expressed in varied, imperfect or informal language.

Answer score

Is now ‘Answer Confidence’ The old answer score was one dimensional, how good was the evidence used. It’s fine but you could have an answer that used systematic reviews and guidelines and yet was still a poor answer. So, Answer Confidence reflects both the strength of the evidence and also how well the question was answered. It’s a big – positive – change, and the new graphic looks lovely!

More room for nuance

Around a third of users told us answers were too short.

We listened.

Answers are now longer and more detailed, not for length’s sake, but to give proper space to caveats, uncertainty, harms, benefits and practical implications. Clinical questions often deserve more than a paragraph.

Explore further

Clinical questions rarely stop at the first answer.

Explore further lets you interact with an answer directly, asking for clarification, more detail, a follow-up question, or a different angle.

It turns AskTrip from a one-shot Q&A into something closer to an evidence conversation.

Transparency

How we generate our answers should not be hidden. Openness helps users understand the process and that, in turn, improves trust

Export to PDF

Answers can now be exported as PDFs, making it straightforward to save, share or discuss them with colleagues.

New design/page layout

All of this is supported by an updated interface designed to accommodate longer answers, follow-up exploration and the wider feature set.

We are hugely grateful to the subscribers who have supported AskTrip in its first year. Their support has helped us improve the system, expand its features, and build a stronger evidence service. We are also indebted to the numerous testers of the new version of AskTrip – you’ve been brilliant.