Trip Database Blog

We’ve been doing some analysis looking at what users are looking for when they search TRIP.  Below are two visual representations of this, using COPD as an example.

The top image shows all the additional search terms used when people have searched for COPD.  In other words, if someone searched for ‘COPD and exacerbations’ we have analysed the auxiliary terms, in this example it’s exacerbations. NOTE: Click on image to make bigger.

This second image uses a similar process to highlight the documents users actually went on to visit. 

I’m guessing, if you’re reading this that you like TRIP and feel what we do is important.

If that is correct can you please read our request for donations.

Thank you in advance.

jon

You can see in the top right of this blog a TILT button, if you press it it opens up TILT with the URL embedded – making it very easy to TILT about a particular page.  We’ve added it to the actual blog, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be added against every article that appears on a website.

Either way, it’s very easy!  Simply paste the following code into your site and you’re TILT enabled…

http://tilt.tripdatabase.com/scripts/refer.js

Earlier this month we posted results of our survey of users which revealed that 40.77% of searches improve patient care.  For the full methodology read the post – click here.

Since it’s start in 1997/8 TRIP has been searched over 51 million times.

So, 40.77% of 51 million =  20,793,000 times TRIP has helped improve patient care.

Is the answer 20,793,000?  Probably not!

But there are good reasons why this figure is too high and reasons why it is too low!

Reasons why the figure is too high

• Methodology weak: relatively small sample size, self-selecting participants (?more likely to be favourable to TRIP), non-validated questionnaire.
• TRIP has improved. The figure of 40.77% assumes that TRIP has always been as good as it is now while it’s likely to have been relatively poor to start with.  However, to be fair to TRIP it has been consistently good for a number of years and the bulk of our searches have been in these latter years.

Reasons why the figure is too low

• TRIP has actually been searched more than 51 million times.  The 51 million refers to people coming to the http://www.tripdatabase.com/ site.  We allow 3rd party sites to search TRIP and return results in their sites.  We have a number of these for examples in clinical portal sites, EMRs etc.  Also, we do various other automated information support systems (such as displaying related articles against 3rd party clinical articles).
• It assumes that the information gained via TRIP is only used once.  If each clinician searches TRIP based on a patient-query I imagine the knowledge gained is used in dealing with subsequent patients.

Irrespective of an accurate figure, I doubt anyone can question that TRIP has had a significant impact!

For my ease I’m placing all the TILT slideshares in one place:

• Your first TILT http://www.slideshare.net/JonBrassey/your-first-tilt
• Making TILT social http://www.slideshare.net/JonBrassey/making-tilt-social
• Use for appraisal http://www.slideshare.net/JonBrassey/tilt-use-for-appraisal

Does this work ok?

I’ve been mentioning TILT in this blog over the last few months.  It was actually live last week, but we started publicising it yesterday. You can see it at http://tilt.tripdatabase.com.  If you’re already registered with TRIP then you can log into TILT using your TRIP details.

What is TILT?  At the simplest level it’s a way for an individual to record their clinical learning (we encourage simple snippets of information).  However, the real beauty is that this learning is shared within the community.  There are lots of nuances associated with TILT, too many to post here now (while I’m still pushing hard to get TILT ‘out there’) but I’m sure I’ll add more thoughts over the coming months and hopefully years.

Go to TILT, interact and let me know what you think.