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New! ClusterMed Organizes PubMed Results into CategoriesVivisimo's ClusterMed, recently licensed by HSLS, is designed to organize PubMed search results into categories for easier review of results. ClusterMed sends the user's query unchanged to PubMed and then clusters the returned articles into hierarchical folders based on subject categories. The folders allow users to view categories, view related articles, and drill down through the topic hierarchy. 
Clustering is derived from the text in the article titles, abstracts, and MeSH terms (when available) within PubMed's output. In addition to clustering by subject, ClusterMed allows articles to be sorted by date, MeSH (medical subject heading), author, or affiliation. To perform a search, a user enters the words or phrases of interest into the ClusterMed search box. The search produces a split screen, with the hierarchical folders on the left-hand side of the screen and the list of citations on the right-hand side of the screen. The citation display shows basic information about each article much like the results seen in PubMed. A search for "heart diseases", for example, retrieved hundreds of articles, clustered into more than 50 topical folders with headings such as congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and valve insufficiency. For some categories, a second-tier clustering is produced. For example, the acute coronary syndrome folder sorted articles into seven sub-topic areas, including heparin and heart failure. ClusterMed is available at <www.hsls.pitt.edu/clustermed>. --Nancy Tannery |
