Technical development of PubMed Interact: an improved interface for MEDLINE/PubMed searches

PubMed Interact is a Web-based MEDLINE/PubMed search application built with HTML, JavaScript and PHP. It is implemented on a Windows Server 2003 with Apache 2.0.52, PHP 4.4.1 and MySQL 4.1.18. PHP scripts provide the backend engine that connects with E-Utilities and parses XML files. JavaScript manages client-side functionalities and converts Web pages into interactive platforms using dynamic HTML (DHTML), Document Object Model (DOM) tree manipulation and Ajax methods. With PubMed Interact, users can limit searches with JavaScript slider bars, preview result counts, delete citations from the list, display and add related articles and create relevance lists. Many interactive features occur at client-side, which allow instant feedback without reloading or refreshing the page resulting in a more efficient user experience.PubMed Interact is a highly interactive Web-based search application for MEDLINE/PubMed that explores recent trends in Web technologies like DOM tree manipulation and Ajax. It may become a valuable technical development for online medical search applications.This research continues to investigate innovations in user-computer interface for online storage and retrieval systems in medical research. The goal of the project is to advance the development of a Web-based medical search tool that can enhance user interaction with the MEDLINE/PubMed database and push to the forefront the different strategies and filters in Entrez PubMed that often remain hidden from novice users, such as age groups, clinical study filters and systematic reviews. The long-term objective is to study and implement clean and effective user interfaces for MEDLINE/PubMed that increases utilization and improves search outcomes without overwhelming novice users and limiting the workflow of advanced users. This manuscript reports the development, implementation and technical evaluation of the research application, PubMed Interact.An earlier version of this project is the Slider Interface