Document databases in medicine

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Document databases in medicine
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Bibliographic databases Medline

• The biggest and the most developed bibliographic
  database in biomedicine.
• Built in National Library of Medicine (NLM),
  Bethesda, USA.
• Available in e-form for a period 1966 today.
• Includes bibliographic data about journal papers
  from 4.600 journals in biomedicine.
• 76 of records with English abstract.
• Still the most important information tool in
  biomedical sciences.

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Bibliographic databases Medline

• Size 12.000.000 bibliographic records.
• Growth 2000 / day.
• Each record contains subject description, made of
  MeSH descriptors.
• The database is free of charge, because it is
  built in governmental agency.
• Numerous installations by secondary providers
  could be very expensive.
• Installation on NLM (PubMed) is free of charge,
  pretty clumsy, but improving all the time.

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MeSH

• Subject description in Medline records is
  composed of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings)
  descriptors and qualifiers.
• diabetes mellitus / drug therapy
• Qualifiers define the extent of concept
  represented by descriptor.
• Medline records contain additional concepts which
  are chemical and pharmacological terms.

descriptor
qualifier
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MeSH
Face A01 Cheek Chin Eye
Forehead Mouth Nose
Respiratory System A04 Larynx Lung
Nose Nasal Bone Nasal Cavity Nasal
Mucosa Nasal Septum
Sense Organs A09 Ear Eye
Nose Olfactory Mucosa Vomeronasal Organ
Taste Buds

• Thesaurus MeSH is built hierarchically.
• Descriptors are very often placed on a different
  places inside the same hierarchical tree an
  example of a descriptor Nose in a hierarchy
  Anatomy.

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MeSH

• There are 15 hierarchies.
• Each descriptor could be placed in more than one
  hierarchy, e.g.
• Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndromecould be C10 -
  Nervous System Diseases or F3 - Mental Disorders

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MeSH example of the position of descriptor
Norepinephrine
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MeSH

• Thesaurus MeSH is used for indexing and searching
  in Medline.
• It is accessible on
• http//www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/2003/MBrowser.html
• Its hierarchical nature helps with
• navigation while selecting the most appropriate
  descriptor,
• broadening and narrowing the query.

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Bibliographic databases trends

• The gap between the worlds of bibliographic
  databases and full document databases is
  narrowing.
• Bibliographic record is often the pointer to the
  real document.
• Full document is usually accessible only if
  users institution has a commercial contract with
  the publisher.

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e-journal databases

• Most big publishers of scientific literature
  offer their journals also in the e-form on the
  web.
• The most precious source of information, but
  expensive.
• For the academic user the access is usually
  organised by the consortia of libraries which
  negotiate with the publishers.
• An example of a big e-journal database is Science
  Direct by Elsevier Science Publishers.

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e-journal databases

• A growing number of scientific e-journals which
  is accessible free of charge.
• Some of them are born digital, some are
  published by minor publishers which are still
  searching their niche.
• Some renowned publishers are putting their
  journals on the web free of charge after some
  time elapse since publishing.
• Reason pressure of the scientific public.

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e-journal databases
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e-journal databases
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e-journal databases
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e-journal databases
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e-journal databases
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e-journal databases
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Health portals

• Type of an web information tool that is
  especially well developed in medicine.
• Portals are web pages with pointers to documents
  or other information tools.
• Developers are trying to cover some field of
  medicine or inform some user group with as
  diverse and quality documents as possible.
• The greatest number of health portals is meant
  for lay public some are built for practicing
  professional.

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Health portals

• Health portals for non-professionals are trying
  to educate an informed patient.
• The best are owned by the (mostly US)
  governmental health agencies and big clinics
  institutions that gain most with the informed
  patient.
• Such portals bring descriptions of diseases or
  conditions, aetiologies, prognoses and
  descriptions of treatments, usually on a very
  high quality level.

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Health portals

• 1st type
• Contents collected from various payable sources,
  linked together and commented.
• Mostly reliable information,
• lots of work used to build,
• commercial owners.
• 2nd type
• Collection of pointers to web sources.
• Sometimes less reliable information,
• less work used to build,
• non-commercial owners.

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Health portals

• 3rd type
• Built by governmental health agencies and
  clinics.
• Only reliable information,
• information written at the agency or clinic,
• lots of referential literature (health
  encyclopaedia, pharmacopoeia).

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Health portals 1st type

• MD Consult
• Built by an association of medical publishers.
• Offer information from 50 peer-reviewed sources
• publishers,
• medical associations,
• US government agencies.
• Web access
• http//www.mdconsult.com/

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Health portals MD Consult
Examples of searching through referential literatu
re, practical advice and data on drugs are
following.
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Health portals MD Consult
Part of a list of textbooks. Result of a search
with query myocardial infarction AND aspirin.
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Health portals MD Consult
Part of a textbook index with pointers to pages
and part of a page where the subject corresponds
to the query from the previous slide.
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Health portals MD Consult
Part of an index of topics an institutions that
gave practical advice to perform medical practice.
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Health portals MD Consult
Part of an index of database on drugs, their
pharmacological actions and usage.
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Health portals MD Consult
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Health portals 2nd type

• CliniWeb
• Built by Oregon Health Science University.
• Pointers to public web medical sources, indexed
  with the descriptors from MeSH.
• While navigating the hierarchy of descriptors we
• find the pointers to the web sources, and
• trigger the search in Medline (PubMed).
• Web access
• http//www.ohsu.edu/cliniweb/index.html

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Health portals CliniWeb
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Health portals CliniWeb
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Health portals 3rd type

• National Institutes of Health, Health Information
• Information from NIH and other US government
  health agencies.
• Information meant for laypeople and medical
  doctors high quality.
• Effective linkage to MedlinePlus, a portal with
  similar characteristics.

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National Institutes of Health, Health Information
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National Institutes of Health, Health Information
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National Institutes of Health, Health Information
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National Institutes of Health, Health Information