BabelMeSH and PICO Linguist

RESEARCH/R&D

Natural Language Processing

BabelMeSH and PICO Linguist

Research Area: Natural Language Processing

Researchers: Paul Fontelo

Project link: http://babelmesh.nlm.nih.gov

BabelMeSH and PICO (Patient, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome) Linguist are multi-language tools for searching MEDLINE/PubMed. Features common to both include:

They are intended for users whose native language is not English.
Queries can be submitted as single terms or complex phrases in one of the languages listed below, which include character-based languages. No other search engine has this feature.
A query can use words from more than one language. No other search engine has this feature either.
The search interface changes to allow search terms to be entered in the chosen language.
Typing accents or other diacritical marks is optional.
Queries are transformed into English.
Results are MEDLINE/PubMed citations published in any one or more of the listed languages, as specified by the user.
Links to full-text articles, if available for free, are included in the search results.

Features specific to BabeMeSH include:

BabelMeSH has a free-text interface.
BabelMeSH is at http://babelmesh.nlm.nih.gov.

Features specific to PICO Linguist include:

PICO Linguist uses PICO’s interface, which has a fill-in-the-blank and menu format for specifying a condition or disease, a single intervention or treatment, and multiple interventions or treatments that are to be compared.
PICO Linguist is available through BabelMeSH (http://babelmesh.nlm.nih.gov) and at the main screen of PubMed for Handhelds (http://pubmedhh.nlm.nih.gov).
BabelMeSH and PICO Linguist support the following languages; the links are to BabelMeSH:

Arabic
Chinese
Dutch
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish

These languages have been available for several years, but developers continue to be interested in adding languages.