Medlibrarian

 

      Why use MedLibrarian.com?

 

Unlike other medical search engines, such as Google, MedLibrarian limits the search results to only include articles from authoritative medical organizations.  This restriction would typically exclude web results from individual medical practices and patient forums.

 

The articles MedLibrarian is searching for is intended for avid readers of scientific information but with very little prior medical knowledge.  These kinds of articles are often called ‘survey’, ‘review’ or ‘guideline’ articles. 

 

MedLibrarian users would consider many patient or consumer friendly medical websites to contain unsatisfying or incomplete presentations of medical conditions and their treatment, often not written by physicians.

 

Some medical websites focus on original content, much like a medical journal and do not include articles from unaffiliated sources.  These include emedicine.com and medscape.com as examples of sites that require only a free signup.  MedLibrarian searches through these authoritative sites as well.

 

Many medical journals are too difficult for a general reader to understand or are restricted by pay per view.  MedLibrarian searches through the many freely available medical journals that publish easy to read articles. 

 

MedLibrarian searches through most of the easy to read, freely available online and yet authoritative sources. 

 

MedLibrarian also searches through other similar search sites such as medlineplus.gov and sumsearch.uthscsa.edu.

 

      What are the authoritative sources of medical information searched through?

 

The sites searched include over 25 Medical Associations, over 35 medical journals, 3 government agencies and 7 doctor-used medical information aggregator sites.

 

      What is www.Google.com ‘s involvement in MedLibrarian results?

 

Google ranks the results according to how important the entire web thinks each search result is. 

 

This approach is very different from that used by other medical search sites.

 

      Have doctors evaluated the search results of MedLibrarian?

 

This search engine is not targeted for use by doctors, especially specialists.  The intended audience is described above. 

 

That said, some testing has been performed and sources best liked by physicians do appear high in the search results pages for a standard published set of queries.  More details will be made available at a later point in time.