RESEARCH/R&D
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.