FindZebra: A search engine for rare diseases

Highlights ► Many clinicians use information retrieved from the web to aid the diagnostic process. Tools such as Google and PubMed are the preferred interfaces for seeking such information. ► We wanted to answer the question of how suitable these tools are in the diagnostic setting. In order to do t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of medical informatics (Shannon, Ireland) Ireland), 2013-06, Vol.82 (6), p.528-538
Main Authors: Dragusin, Radu, Petcu, Paula, Lioma, Christina, Larsen, Birger, Jørgensen, Henrik L, Cox, Ingemar J, Hansen, Lars Kai, Ingwersen, Peter, Winther, Ole
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Consumer Health Information - standards
Evaluation of web search engines
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Humans
Informatics
Information retrieval
Internal Medicine
Internet
Medical Informatics
Other
Rare Diseases
Search Engine - utilization
Specialised search engine
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Highlights ► Many clinicians use information retrieved from the web to aid the diagnostic process. Tools such as Google and PubMed are the preferred interfaces for seeking such information. ► We wanted to answer the question of how suitable these tools are in the diagnostic setting. In order to do that we sat up an evaluation approach. ► Made a dedicated easy-to-use rare disease search engine FindZebra to benchmark the web tools against. ► FindZebra is built upon open source information retrieval software and curated publicly available data. ► The evaluation performed on 56 difficult real life cases highlights the shortcomings of the web search engines and makes the case for the use of specialized search engines for specialized tasks.
ISSN:1386-5056
1872-8243
DOI:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2013.01.005