Posted on May 3: McMaster researchers find better way to search Internet for medical information

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BY Faculty of Health Sciences advancement

May 3, 2004

McMaster University researchers have developed a better way for both the public and healthcare professionals to seek valid medical information on the Internet.

The group, lead by Brian Haynes and Nancy Wilczyski at McMaster's Health Information Research Unit, tested thousands of search strategies to find the best combinations of terms for retrieving clinically sound published reports of the prevention or treatment, diagnosis, prognosis or cause of health care problems. An article about their new search strategies was published last week in the British Medical Journal.

Patients, clinicians and others may now use the search strategies for free through the U.S. National Library of Medicine's Clinical Queries Web site. It is also available by license or subscription through Ovid Technologies Inc. or SKOLAR MD.

“After they've been diagnosed with a disease or condition, many people use a search engine like Google to find out more, but there's no guarantee of the information's validity,” said Haynes. “You get people telling you all sorts of things, often advertising things that have never been tested.”

The new search strategy digs out the information from peer-reviewed medical publications, considered the authorities for medical information.

In setting up the new search strategies, which replaces a system developed by McMaster researchers 10 years ago, Haynes and his team tested more than 5,000 searches in a type of fishing expedition. They developed a database, and then began searches by hand and by computer program to find out if the identified papers would come up.

“This is like fishermen who tag some fish, then go fishing and see how many of the tagged fish are caught. That lets them estimate the number of fish in the pond. We did that and retrieved 98.6 per cent of the high quality studies about diagnostic tests and procedures. We know these search strategies will work well.”

Brian Haynes, MD, PhD, is professor of clinical epidemiology and medicine and chief of the Health Information Research Unit at McMaster University's Faculty of Health Sciences in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Nancy L. Wilczynski, MSc, is a research associate in HIRU and a PhD student at McMaster.