Professional search engines are leaning towards increasing sophistication to provide access to diagnostically accurate, peer reviewed and validated information physicians.
The race is on to find the most efficient way for health professionals to search for clinical images, textbook/journal articles or answers to key clinical questions. Traditionally this search has been labor intensive and frustrating unless searching for a specific journal article or the user is happy to sift through hundreds of abstracts to find the right articles to review.
The classic journal search stalwarts have been PubMed and MedlinePlus which allow searching by topics, authors or journals. The evolution and ontological derivation and semantic search is changing the way we perform search and added a deeper layer of complexity in the interrogation of the wealth of defined medical knowledge. There are many players in this field and we shall review each in turn over a series of blogs.
- GoPubMed - Blog review and official website
- SearchMedica - Blog review and official website
- Hakia - PubMed - Blog review and official website
- Cognition - Medline - Blog review and official website (SemanticMedline.com)
Most of the alternative search engines rely on answering a question, but also on phrases and keywords. Be sure to enter your question with appropriate punctuation and capitalization to get the best results. AltSearchEngines review on medical term searching adds a further revealing insight.
Hi,
Really excellent article. I’ve long used PubMed for all my research of the literature, knowing nothing of the other possibilities.
I proceeded to read your article on SemanticMedicine.com and will try it out straight away to test it’s functionality. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I look forward to reading your analysis of the other search tools!
Thanks again.
John Sattler.
Hi Mike,
I really found this post original, useful and very complete. Whilst a seasoned user of PubMed I knew nothing of the other tools.
I look forward to reading your next articles on this subject.
The times they are a changing | DoughStreet.com - A Blog About Everything // Dec 6, 2008 at 11:08 pm
[...] such as Google. However, with the development of ontological and semantic data tagging, deeper and more complex interrogation of the wealth of defined medical knowledge is [...]