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"While medical professionals can access much of the same informationoffline, they are choosing to leverage technology to access medical literaturein a more convenient and timely manner," said Cyndy Finnie, senior productmanager for SearchMedica. "Many factors can motivate medical professionals toconduct a search, including the desire to stay informed about new developmentsor learn more about high profile topics, like the CDC study released lastOctober that suggested Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (i.e.staph) infections were more common than previously thought.
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"Seasonality also plays an important role, with special observations likeawareness months and special events causing spikes in search volume," sheadded. "But regardless of the factors driving the searches, the SearchMedicadata enables us to identify the medical terms and conditions that aretop-of-mind among medical professionals."
The top five Q4 general medicine-related searches by medical professionalswere:
SearchMedica provides clinicians with a specialist's view of the Web andan easy-to-use interface leveraging the medical expertise of thought leadingmedical editors as well as practicing physicians to ensure that every resultis clinically sound.
For instance, a Google search on the term "bipolar," a mental disorderfrequently in the news as of late, returns approximately 21 million results,most of which are inconsequential to clinicians. The same search nets a moremanageable 40 thousand results on SearchMedica Psychiatry from some of themost credible online sources of medical literature for physicians andpractitioners. The results can be even more targeted by allowing clinicians torefine the search via content category -- peer-reviewed research, evidence-based medicine, etc.
According to Finnie, healthcare professionals who register may receiveupdates about new content and tips on how to use various advanced tools withinSearchMedica. In addition to ranking search results according to relevance,SearchMedica also organizes results into categories such as practical articlesand news, research reviews and editorials, evidence-based articles andmeta-analyses, practice guidelines, clinical trials for patients, continuingmedical education, and alternative-complementary medicine.
For the full SearchMedica Clinical Search Terms Quarterly Report, emailrequests to [email protected].
SearchMedica.com recently was acknowledged for its outstanding userexperience as a recipient of a 2007 Standard of Excellence WebAward.
About SearchMedica.com:
SearchMedica.com indexes only authoritative medical information, approvedfor inclusion by medical editors and a physician editorial board. Medicalprofessionals receive more relevant, smaller sets of search results fromSearchMedica.com than from mainstream engines, which containconsumer-oriented, paid testimonials and other types of unreliableinformation. Since SearchMedica.com is advertiser supported, medicalprofessionals pay nothing to use the specialty search engine. All SearchMedicasearch results are independent and unbiased. They contain well-known, crediblejournals, peer-reviewed research, and evidence-based articles written forpracticing healthcare professionals. SearchMedica is currently available athttp://www.SearchM
