Trip Database Blog

A question I’ve been wrestling with for a fair old while and am now approaching a method to answer it. Arguably people vote with their keyboards and the 600,000+ searches per month indicates we’re doing something right!

However, we’ve arrived a different view. We know that each result gets a ‘score’ based on the relevancy of a particular document to the entered search term(s). This can range from 0 to over 10. However, the best matches rarely score over 5. The score is based on a number of factors such as whether the search term occurs in the document title, relative density of the search term in the text etc.

So in the near future we’ll be grabbing the average score for the top ten results for 10,000+ live searches. At the same time we’ll manually review a set of search results and classify them to see what we consider a reasonable score. So we might say that an average score of 1 is great, 0.7 is good, 0.5 is ok and anything less is poor.We’ll then see how well the real searches on TRIP compare with our classification.

So what will the results tell us?

Well, a few things. I think it’ll give us an idea what proportion of or searches return credible results. If we get a significant proportion of ‘poor’ results it suggests we’ll need to address that. Who knows, we may even write it up as a paper!

At last, Search Wikia has been released, I’ve had a very quick look at this. I like the very simple look and feel on both the home and results pages.

Results are interesting.

A search of TRIP Database finds TRIP first result.

Prostate cancer returns reasonable results.

prostate cancer screening cochrane systematic review (I’m looking for the Cochrane SR on the topic) did not find the anything close (such as the record on the cochrane.org site).

evidence based medicine pretty poor.

prrostate returned no results and there was no spelling correction offered.

For each search term there is the ability to write a mini article about a particular search term – I guess for introductions to the topic. Also, there is the ability to discuss these results which brings up a wiki-style editor. I imagine that’s the area where you state that ‘this result is bad, why not….’

As the site says “Wikia’s search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.“

I’m intrigued; it’s way too early to see if this will develop into a rival to Google (or even a Google-killer). But in the forthcoming weeks/months I’ll return to see how the above searches improve.

Wikia search is to be unveiled on the 7th January (click here for story). This will be a community search engine, the implications of which I’m unsure. I imagine the health search aspects will be focussed on public/patient level but I can’t wait to try it out.

An interesting post (click here to read) on the TechCrunch blog. The full post looks at how various Google services have been used, comparing November 2006 usage with November 2007 usage. Google Scholar has dropped 32%, which is a significant number.

Google launched Scholar towards the end of 2004 and has changed little in that time. I use it occasionally but only as a last resort. I find the link-outs to various publishers sites confusing and painful. In the normal Google I search, click and get the result. In Scholar, I find, click, have to decide which publisher site to go to, they then try and flog you the full-text, you then get to the abstract. I think that indicates how spoilt I am!

What next for Scholar? I imagine Dean (at the UBC Academic Search – Google Scholar Blog) has much greater insight into this sort of thing. But if it was my business/project you’d sit up with figures like this. The figures show that people aren’t using it (or are moving away) and therefore there are two options:

1. Leave it as it is and let it die
2. Intervene, pump in some resources, figure out why people are switching off and improve.

I’d prefer 2. but it’s not as though they make any money out of Scholar and also they have dropped projects in the past.

Hopefully, we’ll see the November 2008 figures…

I treated myself to a laptop, which arrived between Christmas and New Year. I have wireless internet at home and am typing this from the lounge. Technology can be great at times! I’ve not bothered with a laptop for many years now. The first one I had cost £1,800 and that was probably 8-9 years ago. This one I’m typing on – a Dell – cost £600. The main reason for treating myself is a new project I’m likely to be starting in the next 3 months. This will require a great deal of computer work but not much brain power. So I’m hoping that I can watch TV and work at the same time.

We’re going to roll out a few tweaks on the TRIP Database, nothing major, just a few issues that have arisen since the last major upgrade. With the new project not likely to go live till mid-2008 I doubt we’ll see any significant developments to the main TRIP. Although the specialist search engines are likely to see some activity.

An even more pointless blog than normal. I just wanted to post something using the new technology!

I’ve been particularly pleased with the reception the specialist TRIP sites have received. We’ve had more feedback on these than any other feature that I can remember. One loud ‘shout out’ was for a Critical Care TRIP. Always, willing to please (!) I have now published the Critical Care TRIP which was produced with help from a number of people, but special mentions to Lisa Lawrence from Derby City General Hospital and Barry Markovitz (PedsCCM)

Not sure where to start with this one, but 2007 has been one busy and exciting year!

Clinical Q&A
Over 1,700 clinical questions answered. We’ve managed to maintain our very high satisfaction rates and we’ve got quicker. Approximately 85% have been answered within 24 hours.

Takeover. We flirted briefly with being bought out by a European-based PLC.

TRIP Database
To date (in 2007) we’ve been searched over 5,500,000 times this year – a staggering figure. Of these around 100,000 were mis-spellings (and corrected by our systems).

There has also been the release of two upgrades the most recent saw us reveal 26 specialist search engines. These have been very well received and are already being widely used. The following are the top 5 (the figures in brackets are the usage in the last 4 weeks):

• Pediatrics (3,855)
• Obs & Gynae (3,562)
• Cardiology (3,239)
• Urology (3,132)
• Orthopedics (2,940)

Interestingly, Sian (my other half) suggested that we could re-name the Obs & Gynae search to TRIPova – which amused me no end.

The review of our users was worth doing, click here to see the results. I was most pleased by the search success of our users.

What about 2008?

TRIP Database – Some minor upgrades are planned for early 2008 as well as the first TRIP in non-English released by mid-2008. I’m hoping to reach 1 million searches per month by the end of 2008.

Clinical Q&A – Onwards and upwards I hope.

New projects – We have got one very large project planned for mid-2008. We’re hoping to start work on this in early 2008. However, it’ll require a significant amount of effort to get ready for launch. It’s in the broad area of Q&A and I’m fairly confident that it’ll have a massive impact. I don’t remember being as excited about a project before!

Finally, I’d like to thank those involved with TRIP over the year, including:

• Rosalind
• Chris
• Eleri
• Lynne
• Ben
• Dean
• Michelle
• David
• Toni
• Tiffany
• NLH
• Rich, Steve and Phil (and the rest of Sequence)
• Shona
• Lisa
• Judith
• Martin
• Iain
• Paul
• And all the others who I hope I haven’t offended by leaving off but have helped considerably!

It’s that time of year! We’ve reviewed all our searches and the following are the top papers viewed from TRIP for 2007.

1. Management of enteral tube feeding CREST, 2004
2. Growth reference charts Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, 2000
3. Insulin sliding scale Ganfyd, 2007
4. Which oral antibiotics interact with alcohol? NeLM, 2006
5. Is there a list of drugs where alcohol should be avoided? NLH Q&A Service, 2005
6. What is the relavance of poor R-wave progression with an otherwise normal ecg? NLH Q&A Service, 2005
7. Guidelines on the management of cellulitis in adults CREST, 2005
8. Standards for infusion therapy RCN, 2005
9. Sexually Transmitted Infections in Primary Care RCGP, 2006
10. Nutrition support in adults NICE, 2006

The top ten were viewed, from TRIP, a total of 51,301 times!

Click here to return to TRIP

We’re very pleased to announce that the NLH Q&A Service (a service we run) has been nominated for NHS Website of the Year as part of the Health Business Awards.

Apparently, we’re up against two other NHS sites 18 Weeks Delivery Programme and Choose and Book.

The awards are next Thursday, so time to dust off the suit – fortunately, it’s not black tie!