Construction of the clinical trial information retrieval for a nonspecialist :

Development of the retrieval system using thesaurus

Abstract

It is reported that a portal web site for information on clinical research (trials) of National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) which provides clinical trial information in Japan is hard to use, especially difficult to find the information they want, for nonprofessional users including patients. To improve the retrieval capability of the site, we first tried to find problems on the site. For comparison, we also investigated the retrieval capability of ClinicalTrials.gov. In the case of Japan synonyms of the query cannot be found. Although they can almost be found in ClinicalTrials.gov, it is found that the coverage isn’t complete. Moreover, both of them are not able to retrieve hypernyms and hyponyms of the query. We considered that the retrieval system including synonymy, hepernymy, and hyponymy is necessary for nonprofessional users to get all the information they need. Using dictionary whose words are extracted from Thesaurus of Medical and Health related Terms, we then developed a retrieval system including synonymy and hyponymy. As a result, it is confirmed that the system can retrieve a wide range of useful information for the public and patients.