Figure 1.

SmartSearch system flowchart

1. User inputs query terms into LaneConnex: “kidney stones.”

2. SmartSearch dispatches the query to PubMed using ESearch (one of NCBI's Entrez Programming Utilities) and fetches resulting article metadata using EFetch (limited to first 100 articles).

3. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms are extracted and used to compute the most frequently used heading.

4. The algorithm consults a list of known SmartSearch headings and tries to match the heading from step 3. If an exact match is made, resource recommendations for that heading are returned; if no match is made, it traverses up the MeSH hierarchy looking for a known SmartSearch match.

5. One to three “best answer” resources are returned to the LaneConnex user interface if a match in step 4 is made. SmartSearch is silent if no match is found (majority of known-item searches).