Evidence Based Medicine Toolbox

• Evidence Based Medicine
• Search Engines
• On Line Journals
• On-Line Databases
• All in one EBM sites
• Alternative EBM Toolbox Sites
• EBM Tips
• Contact Information

Evidence Based Medicine

Clinical practice is constantly changing, the rate of changing is accelerating and consequently it may even take years before the results of clinical research will be incorporated in day-to-day practice. So there is a large gap between what the biomedical literature contains and the care that most patients receive. The gap is widened by the extensive processing that the results of clinical research require before they can be used. Evidence-based medicine  is a new approach to health care promoting the collection, interpretation and integration of valid, important and applicable research-derived evidence. The best available evidence, moderated by patient circumstances and preferences, is applied to improve the quality of clinical judgments.

There are many information tools that facilitate the practice of evidence based medicine. These include users’ guides to the medical literature, strategies to improve the yield of MEDLINE searches, meta-analyses, resources on-line and software tools bringing high quality information to the point of clinical decision making.

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Search Engines

      These are examples of search engines designed to do quite different jobs. 

•    Yahoo

Yahoo is a categorical search engine.  It searches its own database of Internet addresses and finds sites within categories that are close to or match your search terms.  Yahoo can be quite slow, particularly if you use local versions such as Yahoo UK and Ireland.  It is however a tried and trusted resource and is often used as the site to try out an initial search.

•    Google

Google is a citation search engine.  It searches out sites that match your search terms and ranks them by the number of other sites that are linked to site in question.  It is very fast and often very accurate.

•   Alta Vista

Alta Vista is a basic search engine which trawls the web for terms that match your search terms. It is good for broad based searches where you want as many hits as possible.

•   Excite

Excite is once again a general search engine like Alta Vista. It also called a “concept” search engine because it will also automatically search for synonyms of your search terms  

•   Metacrawler

Metacrawler is one of a growing number of Meta-Search engines.  Meta-search implies that Metacrawler will search several other search engines for hits using your search terms.  The advantage is that you get the benefit of several search engines at once.  The disadvantage is that you get a lot of hits categorized by search engine.  Try it out and see…

•    BULB

BUBL is an academic categorical database, which differs from Yahoo above in that you can search its categories and subcategories directly. Try looking at the BUBL 5:15 database for a topic of your choice.

•    Copernicus

Find quickly and easily what you need on the Web by accessing all of the leading search engines and scores of other information sources. You have to register for free and download a search icon onto your Desktop- probably best for home use.

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On-Line Medical Journals

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On-Line Databases

•    Free Medline (PubMed)

•    Medline (OVID interface) via Biomed

•     CINAHL Nursing Database

•    DARE (Database of Abstracts of Review of Effectiveness)

•    Better search version of DARE available on NUIG Medline

•    Cochrane Databas

•    Trip Database

•    Science Direct

•    Medscape

•     SUMSearch 

SUMSearch is a unique method of searching for medical evidence by using the Internet. SUMSearch combines meta-searching and contingency searching in order to automate searching for medical evidence. Meta-searching, (which is used by Internet search engines such as from Go2Net, Dogpile, and Metacrawler), means simultaneously searching multiple Internet sites and collating the results into one page. In addition, SUMSearch adds the idea of contingency searching. If SUMSearch finds too many ’hits’ from an Internet site, SUMSearch will execute more restrictive, contingency searches. For example, if a search finds 1000 articles at PubMed, SUMSearch may do up to four additional searches until an optimal number is received. On the other hand, if SUMSearch finds few hits from an Internet site, it may add a search of another site.

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All in One EBM Sites

These are Internet Portals that give you access to a collection of medical Internet addresses.  They are excellent sites to use in place of an EBM toolbox such as this

• Doctors Desk 

• The NHS National Electronic Library for Health 

• University of Sheffield -all in one Evidence Based Searched Site

            This site contains a number of EBM tools and is an excellent additional resource to this site .

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Alternative EBM Toolbox sites

• EBM TOOLKIT  

• Centre for EBM: Oxford

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EBM Tips

• How to use Medline: Greenhalgh 1996
• Assessing the quality of medical literature: Greenhalgh 1996
• Understanding medical literature: Greenhalgh

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Contact Information

E-mail comments and questions

If you have any comments or questions about this site please e-mail them to

 Peter Cantillon and Ben Kanagaratnam at: ben.kannuigalway.ie

Office phone  

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