Zebra Hunting

Photo credit: Lesage Stefaan http://tinyurl.com/bpprqn6 Non-clinicians may not be familiar with “zebra” as a medical slang term. Zebra is a medical slang term for a surprising diagnosis.[1] Although rare diseases are, in general, surprising when they are encountered, other diseases can be surprising in a particular person and time, and so “zebra” is the broader concept. The term derives from the aphorism ”When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don’t expect to see a zebra”, which was coined in a slightly modified form in the late 1940s by Dr. Theodore Woodward, a former professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.[2] Since horses are the most commonly encountered hoofed animal for most people and zebras are comparatively rarely encountered, logically one could confidently guess that the animal making the hoofbeats is probably a horse. By 1960, the aphorism was widely known in medical circles.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_(medicine) There are times, though, when it makes sense to go looking for zebras. Search engines like Google and database search (PubMed, EBSCO, whatever) rely on frequency and/or co-occurrence to rank search results, so common conditions are going to be easy to find and rank high in search results, while a rare disease/diagnosis  will not. Enter FindZebra. FindZebra is a specialised search engine supporting medical professionals in diagnosing difficult patient cases. Rar...
Source: davidrothman.net - Category: Medical Librarians Authors: Tags: stuff decision support diagnosis genetic disease informatics rare disease search symptom Source Type: blogs