Posted by Jeff Lash: Product Director, MD Consult
This week we’re taking a closer look at how MD Consult’s search will be “smarter” this Spring. We’ve already discussed improvements to synonymy and better query interpretation. Today we wanted to give you an overview of how we’re using search refinements to provide quicker and easier access to the best clinical medical reference information.
In addition to just looking for all of the documents that contain the terms that someone entered into their search query, we will be classifying that term and potentially providing suggestions for how to “refine” the search for more specificity and accuracy. For example, a search for “gout” would be identified as a disease, and the following refinements may be displayed:
Each of these refinements would run another search – for example, selecting Prognosis would search for “gout and prognosis.”
Refinements will be included for searches that are classified as diagnoses, symptoms, procedures and other clinically relevant categories.
Refinements may be tailored for specific searches as well. For example, a search for “depression” may include the same refinements as shown above for gout, since they are both diagnoses, but may also include refinements like “postpartum depression.” Other refinements could include “in children” or “in adults” (e.g. Asthma in Children, Asthma in Adults) or “and pregnancy†(e.g. Asthma and Pregnancy).
Feedback from physicians and librarians on these search refinements has been very positive and we believe it will provide substantial benefits to those who start their quest for information with a very broad term and then look to narrow down the subject matter that they are researching.
Come back tomorrow for part 4 of our week-long series — we’ll be showing you how we will provide search recommendations along with some search results.
