An automated system for retrieving herb-drug interaction related articles from MEDLINE

An automated, user-friendly and accurate system for retrieving herb-drug interaction (HDIs) related articles in MEDLINE can increase the safety of patients, as well as improve the physicians’ article retrieving ability regarding speed and experience. Previous studies show that MeSH based queries associated with negative effects of drugs can be customized, resulting in good performance in retrieving relevant information, but no study has focused on the area of herb-drug interactions (HDI). This paper adapted the characteristics of HDI related papers and created a multilayer HDI article searching system. It achieved a sensitivity of 92% at a precision of 93% in a preliminary evaluation. Instead of requiring physicians to conduct PubMed searches directly, this system applies a more user-friendly approach by employing a customized system that enhances PubMed queries, shielding users from having to write queries, dealing with PubMed, or reading many irrelevant articles. The system provides automated processes and outputs target articles based on the input.