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Table 1 POEMs Evaluation Study. A comparison of the accuracy and efficiency of ask MEDLINE and Entrez PubMed in retrieving an exact match to cited references in POEMs in BMJ.

From: ask MEDLINE: a free-text, natural language query tool for MEDLINE/PubMed

Search Step

ask MEDLINE 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%