International Journal of Library and Information Science Vol. 1(5) pp. 069-073 October, 2009 Available online http://www.academicjournals.org/ijlis ©2009 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper A study of search engines for health sciences Mayank Trivedi University Librarian, Sardar Patel University, Vallabhvidyanagar-388120, Gujarat, India. E-mail: [email protected]. Tel: +91-2692-226874, +91-9426952224. Accepted 22 September, 2009 The Internet is now the major worldwide Health information communication tool. To avoid waste of time, improved search engines are needed, in terms of accuracy and efficiency. The medical community has been facing the problem of inflation of medical information. Due to information explosion, it is very difficult to find accurate information. The paper describes various search engines which are very much useful for health care professionals. Key words: Health science, medical science, medical informatics, informationist, online tool, search engine, information retrieval, web, information sharing, information dissemination. INTRODUCTION A search engine is a term commonly used to refer to a searcher often has to go through a large number of Web web search engine. A Web search engine is a tool de- pages laboriously. (http://www.bettycjung.net/Sesiteb1. signed to search for information on the world wide web. htm). The web continues to grow at staggering rates. The search results are usually presented in a list and are Automated search engines are increasingly unable to commonly called hits. The information may consist of turn up useful results to search queries. With the help of web pages, images, information and other types of files. the search engine, we can find authoritative, consumer- Some search engines also mine data available in oriented health and medical information. databases or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorithmic and SEARCH ENGINE human input. Health professionals and researchers need information A search engine is an information retrieval system from reputable internet sources to accomplish their designed to help find information stored on computer research work and patient care. Unfortunately, the Web systems, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a cor- has a large number of documents that are irrelevant to porate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer. their work, even those documents that purport to be The Search Engine allows one to ask for content meeting “medically-related”. The internet and its distributed un- specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or organized repositories of information have compounded phrase) and retrieves a list of items that match those the problem of information retrieval. In addition to criteria. Search Engine use regularly updated indexes to information overload, there is the vocabulary problem operate quickly and efficiently (wikipedia) with respect to the retrieval of relevant information from (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search-engine). systems. Often, a health information searcher is Most of the Web Search Engines allow the searcher to uncertain about his exact questions and unfamiliar with use Boolean logic and truncation in search statements, medical terminology. Health information searcher has typically, a Search Engine Works by sending out a spider several unique requirements that distinguish itself from to fetch as many documents as possible. Another traditional Web search. The lack of diversity problem is programme, caked an indexer, then reads these aggravated by the nature of health web pages. Hence, documents and creates an index based on the words search results provided by existing Health Web search contained in each documents. Each Search Engine uses engines often contain much semantic redundancy, which a proprietary algorithm to create its indices ideally, only cannot be easily handled by existing methods for meaningful results are “return query” (http://www.medinfo identifying near duplicate documents or result guide.net). diversification. To find useful health information, the A search engine is a programme that searches documents 070 Int. J. Lib. Inf. Sci. Table 1. Summary of search engines. 16 million articles of the MEDDLINE data base (http://www.gopubmed.com). MedWorm GoPubMed WebMD is a great one-stop medical information site. WebMD Relemed WebMD also has a lot of interesting interactive Daily Med Hippocrates calculators, quizzes and other fun stuff that helps you MedHunt Medical Word search understand medical information a bit easier (http://www. MedInd IndMED webmd.com). Open Med BIOME Relemed is a new Search Engine from the University of BioMedNet CDC Virginia, School of Medicine that searches PubMed CenterWatch Cochrane Library medical literature by assigning relevance to results in addition to just looking for keywords e-Medicine Free Medical Journals (http://www.relemed.com). PubMed WHO Daily Med provides high qualitative information about MedNet MDChoice marketed drugs. This web site provides health Healthatoz Health Finder information providers and the public with a standard, Healthline Health on Net comprehensive, up-to-date, look-up and download MedlinePlus Medscape resource of medication content and labeling as found in Search Medica Medical Crawler medication package inserts (http://www.dailymed.nlm. Scirus Healia nilh.gov/dailymed/about.cfm). Medstory All Health Net Hippocrates is a general Search Engine, an innovative Medical World Search World Healthcare.net and state-of-the-art search application that makes it iMedix Flex Finder possible for any one to simply type in a medical term and Health in India MedMark get a detailed, formatted report on that disease, condition Achoo Dr Koop or medication within a few second (http://www. chennaionline.com/hippocratesweh). Cliniweb international Health Web MedHunt Suggests alternate spellings in several NHS Direct MedPortal languages for misspelled terms. Searches human Healthinsite Intute reviewed sites and computer indexed sites (http://www. hon.ch/MedHunt/). Medical Word search (http://www.mwsearch.com/ documents for specified keywords and return a list of the mwsframetemplate.htm?http://www.mwsearch.com/). documents where the keywords were MedInd provides online access to full-text of Indian www.medinforguide.net (http://www.hyperdictionary.com/ biomedical periodicals to the users in within and outside dictionary/ search+engine). India (http://www.medind.nic.in/). The word net dictionary defines search engines as “a IndMED is a database covering prominent peer computer problem that retrieves documents or files or reviewed Indian biomedical journals. It’s a database data from a database or from a computer network designed to provide medical professionals/researchers/ especially from the internet”. students and the medical library professional quick and The computing dictionary defines search engine “A easy access to Indian literature (http://www.indmed. remotely accessible programme that lets you to do nic.in/). keyword searches for information on the internet. There OpenMed: OpenMED@NIC is an open access archive are several types of Search Engines; the search may for Medical and Allied Sciences. Here authors / owners cover titles of documents, URLS, header, or the fulltext” can self-archive their scientific and technical documents (www.hyperdictionary.com) (Table 1). (http://www.openmed.nic.in/). BIOME is a collection of gateways which provide access to Internet resources in the health and life HEALTH SEARCH ENGINES sciences for the medical professionals (http://www.intute. ac.uk/healthandlifesciences/). MedWorm is a medical RSS feed provided as well as a BioMedNet is an Internet community for biological and Search Engine built on data collected from RSS feeds. medical researchers; service includes full-text journals RSS stands for really simple syndication and it is a tech- and viewing these requires payment of subscription fee nology used to simply publish and gather details of the (http://www.biomednet.com). very latest information on the internet (http://www. Centre for Disease Prevention (CDC) Provides medworm.com). information on chronic diseases, injuries and disabilities GoPubMed is a knowledge-based search engine for and guidelines on their prevention. A premier federal biomedical texts. The Medical Subject Headings (Me SH) public health agency (http://www.cdc.gov). serve as “Table of contents” in order to structure the over CenterWatch Clinical Trials Listing Service is an inter- Trivedi 071 national listing of clinical research trials giving information professional) to search its many database options such about physicians and medical centers (http://www. as Medical images, News, information for patients, centerwatch.com/). Clinical content, MEDLINE, AIDSLINE, and Drug Info. A Cochrane Library contains high-quality, independent “Today’s Headline” section is updated daily to provide evidence to inform healthcare decision-making (http: fresh news for users (http://www.medscape.com/). //www3. interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/mrwhome/106568 Search medica is a series of free medical search 753/HOME?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0). engines built by doctor for doctors and other medical eMedicine.com is clinical review articles both for the professionals with localized versions for UK, USA, France professional and the consumer and Spain (http://www.searchmedica.com). (http://www.emedicine.com). Medical crawler: a leading medical