ABSTRACT: FOAMSearch.net: A custom search engine for emergency medicine and critical care
The number of online resources read by and pertinent to clinicians has increased dramatically. However, most healthcare professionals still use mainstream search engines as their primary port of entry to the resources on the Internet. These search engines use algorithms that do not make it easy to find clinician-oriented resources. FOAMSearch, a custom search engine (CSE), was developed to find relevant, high-quality online resources for emergency medicine and critical care (EMCC) clinicians. Using Google™ algorithms, it searches a vetted list of >300 blogs, podcasts, wikis, knowledge translation tools, clinical decision support tools and medical journals. Utilisation has increased progressively to >3000 users/month since its launch in 2011. Further study of the role of CSEs to find medical resources is needed, and it might be possible to develop similar CSEs for other areas of medicine.
via FOAMSearch.net: A custom search engine for emergency medicine and critical care. – PubMed – NCBI.
Written by Brian S McGowan, PhD
Dr. McGowan has served in leadership positions in numerous medical educational organizations and commercial supporters and is a Fellow of the Alliance (FACEhp). He founded the Outcomes Standardization Project, launched and hosted the Alliance Podcast, and most recently launched and hosts the JCEHP Emerging Best Practices in CPD podcast. In 2012 he Co-Founded ArcheMedX, Inc, a healthcare informatics and e-learning company to apply his research in practice.
