Russell-Rose Tony, Chamberlain Jon
UXLabs Ltd, Guildford, United Kingdom.
School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom.
JMIR Med Inform. 2017 Oct 2;5(4):e33. doi: 10.2196/medinform.7680.
Healthcare information professionals play a key role in closing the knowledge gap between medical research and clinical practice. Their work involves meticulous searching of literature databases using complex search strategies that can consist of hundreds of keywords, operators, and ontology terms. This process is prone to error and can lead to inefficiency and bias if performed incorrectly.
The aim of this study was to investigate the search behavior of healthcare information professionals, uncovering their needs, goals, and requirements for information retrieval systems.
A survey was distributed to healthcare information professionals via professional association email discussion lists. It investigated the search tasks they undertake, their techniques for search strategy formulation, their approaches to evaluating search results, and their preferred functionality for searching library-style databases. The popular literature search system PubMed was then evaluated to determine the extent to which their needs were met.
The 107 respondents indicated that their information retrieval process relied on the use of complex, repeatable, and transparent search strategies. On average it took 60 minutes to formulate a search strategy, with a search task taking 4 hours and consisting of 15 strategy lines. Respondents reviewed a median of 175 results per search task, far more than they would ideally like (100). The most desired features of a search system were merging search queries and combining search results.
Healthcare information professionals routinely address some of the most challenging information retrieval problems of any profession. However, their needs are not fully supported by current literature search systems and there is demand for improved functionality, in particular regarding the development and management of search strategies.
医疗保健信息专业人员在弥合医学研究与临床实践之间的知识差距方面发挥着关键作用。他们的工作涉及使用复杂的搜索策略对文献数据库进行细致的搜索，这些策略可能包含数百个关键词、运算符和本体术语。如果执行不当，这个过程容易出错，并可能导致效率低下和偏差。
本研究旨在调查医疗保健信息专业人员的搜索行为，揭示他们对信息检索系统的需求、目标和要求。
通过专业协会电子邮件讨论列表向医疗保健信息专业人员分发了一份调查问卷。该问卷调查了他们承担的搜索任务、制定搜索策略的技术、评估搜索结果的方法以及他们在搜索图书馆式数据库时首选的功能。然后对广受欢迎的文献搜索系统PubMed进行评估，以确定其满足他们需求的程度。
107名受访者表示，他们的信息检索过程依赖于使用复杂、可重复且透明的搜索策略。平均而言，制定一个搜索策略需要60分钟，一项搜索任务需要4小时，包含15条策略线路。受访者在每个搜索任务中审查的结果中位数为175条，远远超过他们理想的数量（100条）。搜索系统最需要的功能是合并搜索查询和组合搜索结果。
医疗保健信息专业人员日常要解决任何职业中一些最具挑战性的信息检索问题。然而，当前的文献搜索系统并未充分满足他们的需求，对改进功能存在需求，特别是在搜索策略的制定和管理方面。
