Trip Database Blog

18 days after hitting 7,000 users we make it 8,000, at this rate we should hit 10,000 sometime in June.

I mentioned Aardvark in a previous post. Basically, it allows you to send questions to people who might know the answer. They seek to send questions to a users ‘extended social network’. I’m not sure how this is defined, but it’s probably based on the ‘friend of a friend’ principle. Google bought Aarvark a while ago (surely a vote of confidence) and have just started to roll it out on YouTube (click here for post).

I’d love this sort of service on TRIP and we could launch something similar. However, for this to work well we need to have a good idea where people’s expertise lies. Currently, the only details we consistently have on users is what their broad area of interest are (e.g. cardiology, oncology). If there are 100 questions covering cardiology topics – what’s the best way of getting them sent to people who may know the answer? If I had some expertise in, say, stable angina I would find it very off-putting to be asked to help answer questions on cholesterol, stroke, hypertension etc. What would be much better would be to send the user only questions relating to stable angina.

So, to do this requires some sort of profiling. In other words recording and trying to understand a user’s habits on TRIP and making assumptions based on their search terms, click-throughs etc. And, if we had a decent profile, as well as forwarding appropriate questions to them (assuming they’d be predisposed to answering them) we could arguably push new research, conferences, even jobs of interest.

It’s a big task to undertake and requires users to consistently login (to help assign behaviours to an individuals profile). However, I think it’s well worth the effort.

A quick update on the TRIP Database Facebook page – it’s doing really well.

We’ve currently got 233 ‘fans’ (a term I dislike in this context) and we’re having conversations all the time. I suppose, as I’ve said before, it’s another medium to reach out and ‘meet’ our users and to hear what they want.

If you’re not signed up already – go and visit and become a ‘fan’ today.

The juggernaut that is ‘open access’ continues to gain pace (or as they say in this Nature News article ‘The push to open up scientific knowledge to all looks set to go into overdrive’).

The article is a good introduction to the topic so I recommend you read it.

TRIP thrives on linking to high quality open access content but we need to embrace it even more. I can’t help thinking that auto-searching PubMed Central (not forgetting the UK equivalent) would be a good ‘next step’ for us.

But can we help in other ways? If you have any ideas, let us know.

I’ve just been looking back and TRIP Answers has only been around for 16 months (but still had well over 1 million page views), it seems like it has been with us for much longer. Perhaps 16 months is a good time for a ‘makeover’, which is what we’ve done with the site. The changes include:

• Re-designed homepage to make it more dynamic.
• Simplified the look and feel of each answer.
• Introduced a ‘related articles’ panel which pulls back articles from the main TRIP Database which are similar to the actual Q&A. This is especially useful for older Q&As as it helps to show if there is any new research.
• Significantly improved the search, it now uses the same system as found on the TRIP Database.

Lots of other smaller changes to improve the site.

Go take a look and let us know what you think.

When we relaunched TRIP last November it was with the help of Minervation, an Oxford-based company who specialises in ‘evidence based’ websites, knowledge management, information support and usability testing. They carried out some usability testing of our test site.

I blogged about how painful a process it was, but ultimately worthwhile.

They’ve just released a case-study of their work with the charity CancerHelp. Well worth a read!

This morning we hit 7,000 registered users.

We launched the TRIP initiative to highlight content suitable for low-resource settings less than 3 weeks ago (click here).

I’m pleased to see that already 96 articles have been approved (clicked on twice!) to form a small sub-set of articles, this includes 20 systematic reviews and 6 guidelines. A sample of document is shown below.

• Guidelines for the prevention of Malaria in South Africa. South African Department of Health
• Intrarectal quinine versus intravenous or intramuscular quinine for treating Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
• Cost-effectiveness analysis of antiretroviral drug treatment and HIV-1 vaccination in Thailand. NHS Economic Evaluation Database
• Efficacy of iron-fortified whole maize flour on iron status of schoolchildren in Kenya: a randomised controlled trial. Lancet
• The use of misoprostol in obstetrics and gynaecology. BJOG
• Cost effectiveness of high-risk HPV DNA testing for cervical cancer screening in South Africa. Gynecologic Oncology

You never know when you launch an initiative if it’ll suceed. It’s far too early to say if our ‘low resource’ initiative will – but we couldn’t really have expected a better start.

I came across a free screencast site called Jing which allows to make screencasts/videos.
I’ve been looking out for this sort of software for a while, so I was keen to give it a go and here is my first attempt.

I’d love to hear feedback!