The Relative generality and precision of Evidence Based Medical Infor-mation Resources in the Recovery of Diabetes Information

Relative generality and precision are two important criteria for measuring the efficiency and performance of information retrieval systems. The aim of this study was to compare the integrity and location of evidence-based bases in the digital library of Hamedan University of Medical Sciences in data retrieval of diabetes.   

The design of this research is cross-sectional, survey, descriptive and is an applied type. Preparing a list on clinical questions here was done as referring to the Diabetes Center in Semirom for 5 months. The following keywords were searched on databases: Up To Date, Clinical Key, Embase, Cochrane, Ovid, and PubMed Tool. The data were analyzed using the descriptive and inferential statistics in terms of tables, diagrams, chi-square test.

The findings showed that both Ovid and Clinical Key databases recovered more relevant documents in contrast to other databases Based on the most relevant documents. According to the relevant and relatively relevant documents, Clinical Key, Embase, Ovid and Up To Date databases had the highest recall in contrast to the PubMed and Cochrane databases which possessed the lowest recall. According to the most relevant documents, the Ovid Database has the highest precision while the PubMed Database had the lowest precision. Among the databases, up to date had retrieved the relevant documents.

Ovid possesses more recall and precision among the databases analyzed, but evidence-based resources are generally well-suited to clinical questions in the field of diabetes