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UNIT 7: MEDICAL
INFORMATION
RETRIEVAL

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 Learning Objectives
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After completing this session, students should

be able to:

 Understand and practice the concept of

information retrieval techniques

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 Search Engine
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 A program that searches documents for specified

keywords & returns a list of documents where the
keywords were found.
 Popular search engines: Google, Yahoo, Bing & Ask
 Medical search engines
 Omnimedicalsearch.com
 Healthline.com
 Tripdatabase.com
 Pogofrog.com
 Most search engines offer filters to narrow
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search
 Search Engines …
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 Other search engines: PubMed, Science Direct,

Scopus, Wiley Online, CINAHL, & Web of
Science.
 PubMed features comprehensive coverage and

detailed investigations, whereas Google provides

quick overviews.
 Google retrieves more articles with larger
numbers of citations, which implies the
identification of high impact journals, thereby
increasing the validity and precision of results.
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 Google
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 Word came from Googol or number 1 followed by

100 zeroes

 Started in 1996 by 2 graduate students

 Prioritize results by page ranking

 Cites Medline abstracts & full text if available, in

addition to “gray literature” 11/14/2022
 Google Search Strategies
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 List the most important term first

 Search for synonyms by placing ~ in front of a

search term or by using “OR” (cancer OR
carcinoma)

 Quotation marks to search for exact phrase

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 Google Search Strategies
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 Searches are not case sensitive and punctuation is not

needed
 Spelling errors are automatically corrected
 Type “define:” and Google serves as a dictionary
 Enter an arithmetic string and Google will function as a
calculator
 Search the name of a drug and Google will display a
summary, description, dosage recommendations, side
effects, and precautions.
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 Advanced Google Search Options
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 Narrows results by language and region

 Limits results to certain domains E.g. .edu, .gov, .org

 Select search by File type: Word, Excel, PDF, PPT,

etc.

 Most useful articles are generally listed first

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 Google Scholar
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 Searches full text of peer-reviewed scholarly journal

articles at publishers’ websites, including citations and
abstracts provided by National Library of Medicine
through PubMed

 Free and searches medical and lay literature

 “Since Year” filter for recent publications

 Often a better initial search engine than PubMed

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 PubMed Search Engine
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 Developed by the National Center for Biotechnology

Information (NCBI) at the National Library of
Medicine (NLM)
 PubMed covers the fields of medicine, nursing,
dentistry, veterinary medicine, health care
administration, and the pre-clinical sciences
 Primary search engine for unusual cases and research
topics
 Labor intensive but it provides evidence based medical
answers
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 Planning a Search Strategy
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1. Define your information need

2. Choose your search terms
3. Decide which sources to use
4. Find out how the search tool functions
5. Run your search
6. Review and refine you search

Note: 1-3 can be done without a computer

*Complete #1 and 2 on paper for a Google Search

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 1. Define your information need
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 What sort of information are you looking for?

 Specific information, e.g. a fact or date
 General information, e.g. research areas

 Who is going to use the information?

 Researcher? Academic? First year student?

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 2. Choose your search terms
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 What unique words do you think will appear in

the site/article you want?

 Are there any key phrases?

 Are there any synonyms, alternative spellings,

plurals or capitals that you need to consider?

 What broader topic is it a part of or11/14/2022

related to?
 3. Decide which sources to use
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What sources are appropriate?

 Journals—titles, abstracts or full text

 Reference resources, e.g. encyclopaedias, dictionaries

 Books

 Grey literature, e.g. governmental or non-

governmental organizations publications

 Print or electronic 11/14/2022

 4. How search tools function
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Electronic search tools all function slightly

differently and may use:
 Boolean operators

 Phrase searching

 Case sensitivity

 Truncation or wildcard functions

 Fields, stop words, relevance sorting

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 Boolean (Search) Operators
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 Connect terms and locate records containing matching

terms

 Inserted in a search box – AND, OR, NOT

 Must be in UPPERCASE when used

 AND, NOT operators are processed in a left- to right

sequence. These are processed first before the OR
operators

 OR operators are also processed from left-to-right

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AND Operator (to combine two concepts and
narrow a search)
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the AND operator is used to combine two

concepts e.g. hip AND fracture – in the shaded
area; retrieves items containing all the search
terms
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 AND Operator (to combine three concepts)
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the AND operator is used to combine three

concepts e.g. hip AND fracture AND elderly –
in the shaded area.
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OR Operator (info containing one or other
term; will broaden a search)
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renal OR kidney – in the shaded area with the

overlap in the middle having both search terms;
retrieves items containing either search term or
both search terms 11/14/2022
NOT Operator (in one term or the other - will narrow a search)

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pig NOT guinea – in the shaded area; eliminates

items in 2nd term (guinea) or both terms
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 Other search engine functions
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 Phrase or proximity searching: “…” or (…)

 allows you to search for an exact phrase “information
literacy”
prevention and (malaria parasite)
 Truncation/wildcards: *
 allow you to search alternative spellings
child* for child OR childs OR children
parasite* for parasite OR parasites
 Alternate spellings: ?
 can be used to substitute for characters anywhere in a
word
wom?n would search for “woman” and “women”
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Africa AND (malaria OR tuberculosis)
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malaria tuberculosis

africa

Africa AND (malaria OR tuberculosis) – in the shaded area

The (OR) operator retains items in each term and the AND
operator is used to combine two concepts
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 More Search Techniques
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 Field Specific Searching

 author, title, journal, date, url, etc.

 Language Restrictions, Humans or Animals,

Gender and other limits

 Relevancy Ranking
 a grading that gives extra weight to a document
when the search terms appear in the headline or
are capitalized 11/14/2022
 5. Run the search
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 Take the terms/keywords you have decided on

 Find the sources you are going to search

 Read the ‘Help’ page!! to find out how that

particular tool works

 Run the search

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 6. Review and revise your search
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Hopefully you have found what are looking for, or at least

places to start from, but

 Be prepared to review and revise your search scope and

strategy

 Try new sources of information (familiarity is sometimes

too easy)

 Start again near the beginning of this process if you need to

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