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HONselect:
A multilingual and Intelligent Search Tool
Integrating Heterogeneous Web resources
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HONselect is a new meta-search engine offering a
comprehensive collection of medical terms and corresponding pictures,
bibliographic references, news and Web sites [,
, ].
To the author's knowledge, no other search engine offers this level
of innovation, ease of use and time-saving functionality. The 33,000
MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) terms - developed by the National Library
of Medicine - that are at its core can be searched or navigated in
English, French, German, Spanish or Portuguese. This multilingual capability, along with
other unique features transforms the MeSH thesaurus into a powerful
research tool [, ,
]. Not only does it allow
the user to search and navigate the hierarchy of medical terms and
their definitions, it also integrates four separate databases. These
are MEDLINE []- for bibliographic
references corresponding to the term, with the possibility of refining
the results further using criteria such as "therapy", "etiology",
"prognosis", and "diagnosis", as well as "recall" or "precision" (these
are intended for doctors and medical students) [];
HONmedia, HON's own collection of links to 6,800 medical images, on
1,700 different topics, and classified according to MeSH nomenclature
[]; NewsPage, for daily medical
news [], and MedHunt [],
the full-text search engine developed by Health On the Net Foundation
(HON) [] and powered by
the HON's proprietary robot MARVIN. HONselect's database also contains
sites that have been reviewed by HON, as well as those adhering to
HON's Code of Conduct for medical a health Web sites (HONcode) [].
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The HONselect search function checks automatically
for spelling errors in three languages. The hierarchy resulting from
a search is displayed in the language that the term was searched in,
as are relevant Web sites. Using the 'translate' function, one can
easily switch from one language to another so as to obtain additional
and complementary information as well as the list of terms in one
of the other two languages. MedHunt is also capable of narrowing a
search down to Web sites in either French or English, and is currently
also being updated to function in German.
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HONselect's hierarchical organization offers educational
opportunities for the layperson. A search for "diabetes",
for instance, will yield: "Diabetes Insipidus", "Diabetes
Insipidus Neurogenic", "Diabetes Insipidus Nephrogenic",
"Diabetes Mellitus", "Diabetes Mellitus Insulin-Dependent",
"Diabetes Mellitus Non-Insulin-Dependent", "Diabetes
Mellitus Lipoatrophic", "Diabetes Mellitus Experimental",
"Diabetes Gestational", "Pregnancy in Diabetes",
"Obesity in Diabetes", "Glycosuria Renal", "Hypophosphatemia
Familial". The user may then select the term of interest and
refine his or her search.
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This tool,
available for free on the Web, combines powerful search capabilities
and a vast, rich array of medical information with an intuitive interface.
As such, it can be used by patient, doctor and student alike.
References:
| [1] |
HONselect in
http://www.hon.ch/HONselect/ |
| [2] |
HONselect in
http://www.hon.ch/HONselect/index_f.html |
| [3] |
HONselect in
http://www.hon.ch/HONselect/index_d.html |
| [4]
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HONselect's
collection of resources for
http://www.hon.ch/cgi-bin/HONselect?browse+C18.452.297 |
| [5] |
HONselect's collection of resources
for
http://www.hon.ch/cgi-bin/HONselect_f?browse+C18.452.297 |
| [6] |
HONselect's collection
of resources for
http://www.hon.ch/cgi-bin/HONselect_de?browse+C18.452.297 |
| [7] |
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/freemedl.html
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| [8] |
http://www.hon.ch/HONmedia/ |
| [9] |
http://www.individual.com/
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| [10] |
http://www.hon.ch/MedHunt/
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| [11] |
http://www.hon.ch/
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| [12] |
http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/ |
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