[e-drug] free text medline searching

["E-Drug" <e-drug@healthnet.org>]

E-DRUG: free text medline searching
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[This exchange in HIF-NET might be interesting for those e-druggers who want to search medline, the biggest free database of published literature. WB]

Dear Madeleine,

Thanks for the alert on ASkMedline. The URL is:
http://askmedline.nlm.nih.gov/ask/ask.php
and there is an interesting variant, the PICO
http://askmedline.nlm.nih.gov/ask/pico.php
which gets you to formulate the question by population, intervention,
comparator and outcome then specify the type of publication you'd like.

Paul Glasziou
paul.glasziou@dphpc.ox.ac.uk

[HIF-net profile: Paul Glasziou is a general practitioner and director of
the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Oxford, UK. He is also co-editor
of 'Evidence-Based Medicine', a journal which alerts clinicians to
important advances in internal medicine, general and family practice,
surgery, psychiatry, paediatrics, and obstetrics and gynaecology.
'Evidence-Based Medicine' is published by the BMJ Publishing Group and is
available free to developing countries via HINARI. www.cebm.net
paul.glasziou@dphpc.ox.ac.uk


On 12/03/2005, Madeleine Decker,  Mozambique wrote:
>[Dear ALL]
>
>Here is an article of interest.

>------------------
>askMEDLINE: a free-text, natural language query tool for MEDLINE/PubMed
><http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6947-5-5.pdf>
>
>Plain language search tools for MEDLINE/PubMed are few. We wanted to
develop a search tool that would allow anyone using a free-text, natural
language query and without knowing specialized vocabularies that an expert
searcher might use, to find relevant citations in MEDLINE/PubMed. This
tool would translate a question into an efficient search.
>askMEDLINE might be a useful search tool for clinicians, researchers, and
other information seekers interested in finding current evidence in
MEDLINE/PubMed. The text-only format could be convenient for users with
wireless handheld devices and those with low-bandwidth connections in
>remote locations.
>--------------------
>
>Regards,
>
>Madeleine