We’re really excited to announce the launch of our mind map feature, our second AI product (after ‘Latest evidence’)!
A mind map is – according to ChatGPT: A mind map is a visual tool used to organize information, ideas, or concepts in a structured, non-linear way. It starts with a central idea or topic, from which related ideas branch out in a radial fashion. Each branch can have sub-branches, creating a network of connected thoughts. Mind maps help with brainstorming, problem-solving, studying, and planning by making complex information easier to understand and remember. They typically use keywords, colors, and images to enhance creativity and recall.
Seeing an image will better help understand the concept, but to start you need to understand how to create one! Firstly, do a search and at the top of the results you’ll see this:
Note the Mind Map ‘button’ on the right-hand side. You click on that to generate a mind map based on the top 150 search results. In this example we used a search for prostate cancer:
Not only does this give a great topic overview it can support search as each branch and sub-branch is clickable to generate a new search.
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.
We took a representative clinical question and ran it through Trip Pro, PubMed Best Match (the default algorithm) and PubMed Most Recent. We then exported the top ten results from each – our assumption was that it’s a busy health professional who doesn’t have lots of times to look through pages of results!
The clinical question this time related to the use of use and safety of SSRIs during pregnancy. For each database we used the search terms SSRIs AND pregnancy – you can try the search yourself using these links:
Trip Pro (NOTE: this assumes you have access to Pro)
We then asked ChatGPT to compare the results using this prompt:
Below are three set of results for a search for ‘SSRIs AND pregnancy’ with a view to answering the question about the use and safety of SSRIs during pregnancy. Comment on quality of evidence, recency of articles and applicability to answering the question. And give an overall view on which database is likely most useful to a busy health professional.
It made the following assessment for each database:
Trip Pro: This database provides up-to-date and practical information with fewer older references, making it suitable for answering clinical questions efficiently.
PubMed Best Match: This database offers a mix of high-quality and relevant evidence but includes some outdated material. Its focus on SSRIs in pregnancy makes it useful, but its age range might require careful selection of the most recent and relevant articles.
PubMed Most Recent: This database excels in recency and breadth but may be less practical for quickly answering focused clinical questions due to its diversity and inclusion of less clinically relevant research.
And it gave this final comment:
Recommendation for Busy Health Professionals Trip Pro is likely the most useful due to its balance of recency, applicability, and practicality. It provides high-quality, up-to-date evidence without being overly broad or outdated, making it ideal for answering focused clinical questions about the safety of SSRIs during pregnancy.
We continue to have a impressive impact on care around the globe, helping support millions of decisions with evidence-based content. This is Trip’s core function, as such, it’s ‘business as usual’. However, we have continued to improve the site as much as we can and 2024 was full of significant improvements (BTW this opening section is identical to last year’s review – apart from the update to the year)!
Across the year our Rapid Review (RR) service has brought us great joy and an equal amount of challenge. Doing RRs for sectors we’ve not usually worked with has been particularly interesting. Given our experience and skills we can produce great rapid reviews at a much lower price than most, so if your organisation needs a RR undertaking in 2025, then send us an email: rapidreviews@tripdatabase.com.
January 2024 We spent a lot of time working with LLMs to get to grips with Q&A. Our initial attempts were really encouraging and we know – nearly 12 months later – a lot more of the potential for LLMs.
February 2024 More work on LLMs, this time with a latest evidence feature. This was great fun and is now a live project on Trip (see here), and this is likely to expand in 2025. We also added a large number of new guideline scores to Trip. The title of the announcement Disappointing guideline scores, sums up our thoughts!
March 2024 Many of our searches are really simple so it was great to better understand the motivations of our users with by launching a survey. We also had a blast from the past, courtesy of the Internet Archive, with the original 25 publishers included in Trip:
August 2024 A quiet month with a simple announcement regarding miss-spelling!
September 2024 We released the mis-spelling feature mentioned above but more importantly we broke a record for the number of systematic reviews we link to, with over 550,000!
October 2024 Latest evidence was launched! This is going down really well and so we’re looking to expand to areas outside of primary care.
November 2024 Trip is often asked how to we compare with PubMed. To help we created a comparison based on an example search. We have now done two comparisons (one and two). We used ChatGPT to undertake the analysis – felt it was less biased than asking ourselves. If you’re interested in answering clinical questions using high-quality evidence then the results are clear….
December 2024 We released some important design changes (see here and here). Many were small but boosted transparency and usability of the site.
We also started working with Mind Maps, really amazing feature that we hope to roll out in early 2025. This combines LLMs and a lovely graphical interface.
If we had to summarise 2024 it would be the year we got comfortable with LLMs (as you’ll see in 2025) and the year we continued to push out new features to make Trip a better service for our users. And, in the spirit of this year and next, we asked ChatGPT to summarise our year:
In 2024, Trip Database focused on leveraging LLMs for innovation, enhancing infrastructure and usability, and expanding evidence-based features like “latest evidence.” User feedback and AI played central roles in refining offerings, while milestone achievements and transparency-driven updates set the foundation for future advancements.
This is the second in our series comparing Trip to PubMed, the first can be seen here. Last time we explored prostate cancer screening, while this time it is for the search asthma diagnosis.
For Trip we used the default Pro search and for PubMed we will show the top 5 results for both their ‘Best match’ algorithm and ‘Most recent’.
We then took the top ten results for each of the three different searches and asked ChatGPT to compare the results exploring issues like clinical relevance, quality of the evidence and recency. ChatGPT’s response was:
The roll out of the synonym system, yesterday, is already proving beneficial.
Before we didn’t have a synonym for surgery, so we will now add surgical!
surgery – 578,100 results
surgical – 407,425 results
surgical OR surgery – 779,828 results
It does raise interesting questions about how strict we make the synonyms. One could argue that surgery and surgical are not strict synonyms as they can be used slightly differently. But the overlap seems large enough to warrant it!
Two weeks ago we announced a raft of design changes, today is a more modest update. It relates to being transparent about the synonyms we use in Trip. Until now it has never been possible to see what synonyms we used. Well, from now you can see and also comment.
When you do a search there is a subtle Synonyms box:
If you click on the box it shows the synonyms used in the search:
In this case we can see that we used the synonym acetaminophen for paracetamol.
You’ll also notice a Comments section. If you use Trip and you feel the current synonyms are poor then let us know. Similarly, if there is no synonym and you think there should be, then also let us know. Your input can help make Trip better for you and for other users.
We’re interested in allowing users to create topic maps for a search. We have tried this ‘mind map’ approach for a search for prostate cancer. There are two examples below, the first based on the top 100 search results and the second on the top 300 results.
I think these are really interesting, giving users an instant overview of the topic. I dare say it could be used for search refinement. By that, start with a broad search and then decide to focus on diagnosis or focal therapy…
We’ve just rolled out some big and some little design changes.
Above the search results:
‘Order By’ has been changed to TripRank, previously it was quality. ‘Quality’ was mis-leading as the default algorithm takes into account quality, date and relevancy. TripRank better reflects this.
‘Show Results’ now allows users to select 20, 50 or 100 results on the page. Previously users were only able to see 20 results on a single page.
‘Results page key’ now opens up within the same window – as a modal – previously it opened up in a new window.
Date Range:
Clearly labelled and when a user clicks in the ‘From’ or ‘To’ box there is a drop-down selection (although users can still simply type the year)
Broken link:
Currently, when a user clicks the ‘Broken link?’ button they get a simple ‘thank you’. However, from now users will be able to leave their email so that we can update them when we resolve the issue – likely an updated URL or notification that it has been deleted. This feels really important to me as Trip benefits enormously from these reports, it feels like we’re giving something back directly to the person reporting the issue!
Export articles:
We have slimmed down the export options area and now reads ‘top to bottom’, making the options more logical (a few people have reached out expressing confusion while using this feature):
Accessibility Statement:
This has now been added to the footer
One final, subtle change, and this is in colours for primary research and controlled trials:
At the top was the previous red and beneath is the new orangey/red. Red is associated with danger so seeing lots of reds seemed quite negative (and I felt it looked a bit angry). The orange seems more peaceful.
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