Use of Drugline—A Question-and-Answer Database

1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgitta Öhman ◽  
Helena Lyrvall ◽  
Gunnar Alván

BACKGROUND: DRUGLINE is a full-text, question-and-answer database offering drug information that has been evaluated as a result of consultations in a drug information center. A problem-oriented database such as DRUGLINE can be an efficient way to meet the increasing need among healthcare professionals for timely and accurate drug information. OBJECTIVE: To investigate how DRUGLINE was used during the years 1988 and 1990 and to identify any changes in needs, expectations, satisfaction, and use that occurred during those two years. DESIGN: This study investigated the use of DRUGLINE during two separate years. Questionnaires relating to DRUGLINE use during 1988 and 1990 were sent on two occasions to all users having access to the database. The anonymous questionnaires contained 17 and 18 questions, respectively. SETTING: The setting included MEDLINE/DRUGLINE use in healthcare institutions, pharmacies, medical libraries, and the pharmaceutical industry. PARTICIPANTS: The questionnaires were sent to all customers of the database host Medical Information Centre at the Karolinska Institute Library and Information Centre having access to DRUGLINE during 1988 and 1990. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The responses were organized into those from users and nonusers within the following professions: Physicians, pharmacists, librarians, and others. RESULTS: The response rates were 87 percent in 1989 and 89 percent in 1991. The professional distribution among the respondents in 1991 was physicians, 36 percent; pharmacists, 20 percent; medical librarians, 21 percent; and others, 23 percent. One-third of the respondents had searched DRUGLINE during 1988 and 1990. The number of users increased by 25 percent between 1988 and 1990; however, the percentage of users versus nonusers did not change. Pharmacists comprised the largest user group and experienced the greatest increase in users. Most users were satisfied with the result of their searches, usually because they were guided to solve a specific drug problem at a reasonable cost. CONCLUSIONS: A full-text, question-and-answer drug information database has great potential to help problem-solving in medical care. The technical versatility of the information system and its factual contents need to be continuously assured. Health professionals have to identify their information needs and develop efficient procedures to meet these needs.

Acute Pain ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
J.H.O. Turunen ◽  
P.T. Mantyselka ◽  
R.K. Ojala ◽  
P.O. Kroger ◽  
R.S. Ahonen

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha H. O. Turunen ◽  
Pekka T. Mäntyselkä ◽  
Raimo K. Ojala ◽  
Petri O. Kröger ◽  
Riitta S. Ahonen

1966 ◽  
Vol 05 (03) ◽  
pp. 142-146
Author(s):  
A. Kent ◽  
P. J. Vinken

A joint center has been established by the University of Pittsburgh and the Excerpta Medica Foundation. The basic objective of the Center is to seek ways in which the health sciences community may achieve increasingly convenient and economical access to scientific findings. The research center will make use of facilities and resources of both participating institutions. Cooperating from the University of Pittsburgh will be the School of Medicine, the Computation and Data Processing Center, and the Knowledge Availability Systems (KAS) Center. The KAS Center is an interdisciplinary organization engaging in research, operations, and teaching in the information sciences.Excerpta Medica Foundation, which is the largest international medical abstracting service in the world, with offices in Amsterdam, New York, London, Milan, Tokyo and Buenos Aires, will draw on its permanent medical staff of 54 specialists in charge of the 35 abstracting journals and other reference works prepared and published by the Foundation, the 700 eminent clinicians and researchers represented on its International Editorial Boards, and the 6,000 physicians who participate in its abstracting programs throughout the world. Excerpta Medica will also make available to the Center its long experience in the field, as well as its extensive resources of medical information accumulated during the Foundation’s twenty years of existence. These consist of over 1,300,000 English-language _abstract of the world’s biomedical literature, indexes to its abstracting journals, and the microfilm library in which complete original texts of all the 3,000 primary biomedical journals, monitored by Excerpta Medica in Amsterdam are stored since 1960.The objectives of the program of the combined Center include: (1) establishing a firm base of user relevance data; (2) developing improved vocabulary control mechanisms; (3) developing means of determining confidence limits of vocabulary control mechanisms in terms of user relevance data; 4. developing and field testing of new or improved media for providing medical literature to users; 5. developing methods for determining the relationship between learning and relevance in medical information storage and retrieval systems’; and (6) exploring automatic methods for retrospective searching of the specialized indexes of Excerpta Medica.The priority projects to be undertaken by the Center are (1) the investigation of the information needs of medical scientists, and (2) the development of a highly detailed Master List of Biomedical Indexing Terms. Excerpta Medica has already been at work on the latter project for several years.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Feng ◽  
Ruocheng Huang ◽  
Shan Lu ◽  
Tao Shan ◽  
Hong Wang ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND With the development of the Internet, online medical community can help patient access to medical information and relevant decisions more conveniently, and meet the needs of patients for their own healthcare management. Mining these Q&A (Question and Answer) data, we can help doctors give more targeted feedback which improve the efficiency of question-and-answer, and patient satisfaction. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to (1) analysis frequency and position of diabetes related diseases or symptoms in Q&A website and (2) find out the differences of disease terms in gender and age using in the questions. METHODS We collected 5766 Q&A diabetes related data on the website of Chunyuyisheng from June 2012 to April 2020. In 38176 combined sentences, a vocabulary contains 3 categories of 3851 word and 2094 ICD (International Classification of Diseases) matching terms were obtained by calculating the similarity using word vectors. Proportion of the frequency of words and Mann-Whitney U test on word position were used to quantify the difference in patient’s gender and age group. RESULTS The vocabulary of the disease category accounts for 70%. We analyzed the word frequency and position in questions for different gender and age group. For gender, women participate in question answering more, accounting for 53% of total questions. They pay more attention to pregnancy, sleep and thyroid gland related vocabulary compared to men. Men focus more on circulation system, kidney failure related vocabulary. For different age group, pregnancy, glucose regulation, digestive and respiratory system related vocabulary have a higher proportion for patients under 40 years old. Patients over 40 years old pay more attention on kidney failure, cerebral ischaemia, infectious and circulation system. CONCLUSIONS This study provides a new insight into frequency and position of diabetes related diseases or symptoms in online medical services. It can show patients’ different attention by comparing disease or symptom categories for gender and age with ICD disease codes. The frequency and position of disease category words in patients’ conversation can be used for further risk evaluation for chronic diseases research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimmy Gonzalez ◽  
Samantha Bryant ◽  
Michael Hogan ◽  
Sandra Bai ◽  
Lesley Fierro ◽  
...  

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-55
Author(s):  
Arthur Ruskin

Arguing that the scientific method must be the ultimate test in determining drug efficacy and safety, Dr. Ruskin points out that the medical profession is often plagued by unscientific attitudes and “research.” Like their patients, physicians are influenced by nonscientific sources of drug information such as advertising and often trust their own “experience” rather than the results of controlled clinical and epidemiologic trials.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document