Biomedical Devices Assignment
Every term students from Biomedical Engineering come to the Bio-Medical Library seeking assistance in searching for articles from scholarly journals to fulfill a specific assignment. They have to find at least one study about a biomedical device that is not clinical; that is, it must be a mechanical test or animal study. They cannot use studies in which humans are the research subjects. This can be quite challenging. Most of these students have no experience with MEDLINE searching and thus require significant instruction. Rather than having to reinvent the wheel each term, I have typed up some notes regarding search strategies that some of us find useful. Please read these and comment on the blog post if you have additional suggestions or tips. After I receive your comments, I will create a pathfinder for the students.
Keep in mind that it may not be possible to find appropriate articles for this particular assignment on each and every specific medical device. It can be more productive and efficient for students to switch to a different device if the right kind of article is not forthcoming in the search. Search options are listed roughly in declining order of usefulness.
1. Reference sources. Can be useful in identifying biomedical devices.
a. Title: Encyclopedia of Medical Devices and Instrumentation
John G. Webster, editor-in-chief. Wiley. 1988.
BIO-MED Reference W13 E555 1988
b. Title: Biomedical Engineering Handbook (print or ebook)
URL: http://www.engnetbase.com/ejournals/books/book_km.asp?id=402
Location: WALTER Sci/Eng Reference
R856.15 .B56 1995; BIO-MED QT29 B615 2000
c. Title: Encyclopedia of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering
Gary E. Wnek and Gary L. Bowlin, editors. 2004.
URL: http://www.lib.umn.edu/libdata/link.phtml?page_id=2162&element_id=79883
2. Ovid MEDLINE
a. See if there is a MeSH term for the class of devices (e.g., Heart-Assist Devices).
b. If no appropriate MeSH term exists, do a keyword search for the device (.tw. for text word or .mp. for multi-purpose). Remember to use appropriate truncation (end truncation is $) and adjacency operators (e.g., adj2 or adj3). This can work well for searching for a particular model or manufacturer (e.g., Jarvik).
c. AND in Materials Testing, Prostheses and Implants (includes all possible prosthetic devices as narrower terms), Equipment Design (which includes Prosthesis Design as a narrower term) or Biomedical Engineering/instrumentation to narrow results to citations for studies that pertain to engineering design issues. Just keep in mind that these terms might not be consistently and routinely applied in the indexing.
d. Try using a broad term like Cardiology or Neurology, focus it and add instrumentation as a subheading.
e. Look at complete references for other headings that use instrumentation as a subheading that might be useful to search.
f. It can also be useful to float the instrumentation subheading (instrumentation.fs.).
g. To get rid of the clinical studies with human research subjects, either limit to Animals or run Humans as a MeSH term and NOT it with your results.
h. You can also try limiting to the Biotechnology Journals subset, but this doesn’t always help.
3. Compendex
a. While this is an engineering database, be aware that it does index some clinical studies, so look carefully at the abstracts.
b. It is not linked to the Bio-Med page, but is linked to either the main libraries page or the Walter page.
c. Includes controlled terms. The index of controlled terms can be browsed from the Quick Search screen. The Quick Search screen also allows you to search particular fields, including controlled terms. There is also a separate tab for the Thesaurus.
d. Some controlled terms that might be useful: Equipment Testing, Biomedical Equipment – Design, Biomedical Engineering.
e. There isn’t a way to limit only to animal or mechanical studies, but you can NOT out patient* in All Fields on the Quick Search screen.
f. Potentially useful limits on the Quick Search might include Journal Articles (document type), Experimental (treatment type) and English (language).
g. The classification codes can also be useful. There doesn’t seem to be a way to browse these, but you can mine them from the detailed records of other citations.
h. Can try narrowing results using the facets on the right side of the window. You select either which facets you want to include or exclude.
4.INSPEC
a. While this is an engineering database, be aware that it does index some clinical studies, so look carefully at the abstracts.
b. It is not linked to the Bio-Med page, but is linked to either the main libraries page or the Walter page.
c. The search interface is the same as Compendex, but the controlled vocabulary and classification codes are different.
5. BIOSIS Previews
a. Covers the biological and medical sciences, including biochemistry, biophysics, biotechnology, botany, environment, microbiology, and zoology. It may have better coverage of animal studies than MEDLINE on some topics.
b. Subject indexing in BIOSIS does not seem to be very consistent.
c. Equipment, Apparatus, Devices and Instrumentation can be a useful subject heading ANDed with broader subject headings (e.g., Cardiovascular Medicine OR Cardiovascular System).
d. Because the indexing in BIOSIS is not very specific for medical topics, keyword searching for a particular device (e.g., jarvik.mp.) can be helpful.
6. Google Scholar
a. People should always enter Google Scholar from the Libraries’ Web page so that they get the FindIt links.
b. Remind people that Google Scholar does not index all scholarly journals.
c. AND is implicit in Google Scholar, but the Boolean OR operator works. It must be capitalized. For NOT, use – before the term.
7. See Selected Resources for Engineering, Biomedical for more subject resources
Looking forward to reading your comments-
Martha