Table 1.
POEMs Evaluation Study. A comparison of the accuracy and efficiency of askMEDLINE and Entrez PubMed in retrieving an exact match to cited references in POEMs in BMJ.
| Search Step | askMEDLINE exact match retrieved/total questions (% total) | Entrez PubMed exact match retrieved/total questions (% total) |
| A. Match at first pass | 59/95 (62.1) | 13/95 (13.7) |
| B. Match after a related citation search | 11/95 (11.6) | 8/95 (8.4) |
| C. Match after question rephrase | 2/95 (2.1) | 0/95 (0) |
| Total exact match after A, B, and C | 75.8% | 22.1 |
| No match after A, B, and C, but relevant articles retrieved | 20/95 (21) | 16/95 (16.8) |
| Overall efficiency | 96.8% | 38.9% |
| Citations retrieved, but not matched or relevant | 3/95 (3.1) | 6/95 (6.3) |
| No citations retrieved | 0/95 (0) | 52/95 (54.7) |
| Overall retrieval failure | 3.1% | 61% |