Information Retrieval in Telemedicine: a Comparative Study on Bibliographic Databases

Background and Aims: The first step in each systematic review is selection of the most valid database that can provide the highest number of relevant references. This study was carried out to determine the most suitable database for information retrieval in telemedicine field. Methods: Cinhal, PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus databases were searched for telemedicine matched with Education, cost benefit and patient satisfaction. After analysis of the obtained results, the accuracy coefficient, sensitivity, uniqueness and overlap of databases were calculated. Results: The studied databases differed in the number of retrieved articles. PubMed was identified as the most suitable database for retrieving information on the selected topics with the accuracy and sensitivity ratios of 50.7% and 61.4% respectively. The uniqueness percent of retrieved articles ranged from 38% for Pubmed to 3.0% for Cinhal. The highest overlap rate (18.6%) was found between PubMed and Web of Science. Less than 1% of articles have been indexed in all searched databases. Conclusion: PubMed is suggested as the most suitable database for starting search in telemedicine and after PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science can retrieve about 90% of the relevant articles.