Trip Database Blog

In our previous post I revealed the release of our related articles functionality.

We have now released a bit of code that allows users to embed related TRIP articles into their own pages. For examples see these two examples Noctural Enuresis and Acne Vulgaris. In both cases the related articles are on the right-hand side of the screen, just below the main TRIP logo.

To be clear, you place the code on your site and it will find TRIP content related to your site and place the 3 top related links onto your site – all automatically!

So, if you embed the code, what’s happening? Essentially, the code alerts TRIP to come and look at the page and find related articles from within TRIP’s content. The top three most related articles are then sent back to the page.

If you want to use the code let me know!

TRIP has a CPD (Continuing Professional Development) facility which allows clinicians to reflect on articles that they have looked at via TRIP (for further details click here). These reflections are saved on our system and users can recall these at any time.

We have just rolled out an enhanced export facility that gives the user greater flexibility as to what they export (ie only between 2 dates, to not export certain reflections etc). In addition, the recorded learning is not exported as a PDF file. We have updated our slide show to reflect this (click here).

Since launch our background knowledge boxes have seen heavy usage. The background knowledge boxes appear at the top of the search results and link to textbook style entries (e.g. eMedicine). The idea is that they help give some contextual links to the main research articles.

One idea we’ve got is to allow users to nominate references/links and, in a way, adopt a keyword. This is still not likely to be properly rolled out, although we did receive a suggestion for the osteoporosis entry and have added a link to the WHO FRAX fracture risk assessment tool. On one level this is a small step, but for me it carries a certain significance around future possibilities!

I’ve long admired and found useful the related articles feature on PubMed. When you’re carrying out a search on PubMed and think you’ve exhausted all the references, clicking on ‘Related articles’ often finds gems you would have otherwise missed.

After years of envy, we’ve just rolled out a test version and this can be tried by clicking here. There are multiple ways of using the related article feature and the most obvious is to add text into the text box and press search. Once you’ve carried out a search you’ll see that under each record there is this chunk of text ‘Related: Method A Method B’. These are two different methods of finding articles related to that particular article.

We’re looking for novel ways of using the related articles via the text box and here are a few suggestions:

• Asking free-text questions. For instance typing in “Is calcium useful in preventing falls?” gets pretty good results.
• Writing an article and need to find a reference to support a particular passage – add the passage to the text box and see related references!
• Education needs. One tester has highlighted the usefulness of linking in with PUNs and DENs (educational concepts – Patients Unmet Needs and Doctors Educational Needs) which UK doctors are encouraged to consider. Add the PUN or DEN to the text box and see what happens!

Anyway else got any suggestions?

TRIP has a track record in helping clinicians find answers to their questions. However, it would be naive to think it answers all the questions all the time! So, trying to be helpful, we’ve linked in with the BMJ’s clinical community doc2doc. We’ve just ‘opened’ it in the last few days and the BMJ even produced a press release.

The whole idea behind this collaboration is that if a user of TRIP doesn’t find what they’re after they can use the doc2doc forum to obtain an answer. This could come from the wider clinical community on doc2doc or even the TRIP team, who’ll regularly monitor the site and use our experience to help answer the question.

I’vew just noticed that it’s been nearly three weeks since the last post. I think that’s a sign of how busy things have been! We’re currently working hard on the next update to TRIP. We’ve got a very tight deadline and lots of things happening at once. Also, as some of the upgrades are significant changes they’re requiring significant work.

The main work is around:

• CPD – we’re finally putting the finishing touches on our self-test CPD feature, with over 6,000 education packs.
• TRIP Answers – mainly a redesign, improved search and ‘new research’. This latter feature will automatically highlight new research that may be of interest/update an exisiting question. This is being powered by some semantic technology we’re using.
• Semantic technology features, too complex to state in this brief post, but one for another time. Think ‘Related articles’ in PubMed…

A few tweaks of the CSS on TRIP and it works rather well on the iPhone (and Android phones – thanks @amcunningham). See below for some screen shots. The top image is how the icon looks on the start page of the iPhone, below that is the top of the results page and right at the bottom is the bottom of the results page.

As well as looking great it makes TRIP usable on smartphones which is becoming an increasingly important ‘market’.

NOTE: @amcunningham has commented that the pictures are potentially mis-leading. To be clear, what I’ve described is not an ‘app’ it’s simply our site optimised for web-browsing. The top top image shows a bookmarked TRIP icon that takes you to the homepage.

I felt very privileged to be asked by Hope Leman for an interview. The results can be seen on her blog Significant Science and on AltSearchEngines.

One response I think could have been improved on was what aspect of TRIP am I most proud. I’m happy with what I said, but could have added to it. In the 10+ years of TRIP I estimate we’ve been searched around 50 million times. If only 1% of these had resulted in improved patient care for a single individual, that’s half a million people – that is mind-blowing….

But, how does one measure the impact of TRIP? There are many possible reasons for seaching TRIP and many possible outcomes, here are a few:

A clinician with a clinical query, some potential outcomes:

• They may not find any suitable documents.
• They may find some documents and find insufficient evidence to help.
• They may find some documents that support their current care.
• They may find some documents that support a change in practice.

A student doing a study, some potential outcomes:

• Finds no articles, poor outcome.
• Finds useful articles that help in their studies.

An academic researcher undertaking a review or creating a guideline, some potential outcomes:

• Finds no articles, poor outcome.
• Finds articles that help improve the review or guideline.

As mentioned the list is not meant to be exhaustive! However, it should illustrate that people come to TRIP for many reasons and there are many potential outcomes.

A small bit of research we carried out in 2007 (click here to see the full post) showed the following:

• 13% – find the information they wanted all the time
• 53% – find the information they wanted most of the time
• 19% – finds the information about half the time
• 15% – find the information less than half the time

It was a small sample and invariably biased – so may not help much in deciding the impact of TRIP.

If anyone has any bright ideas, please share them!

Another new feature that was released in the latest upgrade was a community noticeboard. This allows for people to send targeted messages to TRIP users. It’s free and easy to set-up. See the slideshow below (best viewed in full screen mode). We envisage it being used to highlight conferences, job and to even ask for help! However, we’re keen to see how people utilise the feature, so feel free to be imaginative!