[Electronic search for the best biomedical evidence: tactics and strategy]

The search for biomedical information arises largely from the need to find, on the part of health operators, reliable and updated answers to the questions elicited by their patients. Even if today technology makes available powerful electronic tools for health education and updating, the enormous quantity of health information remains a major issue for professionals looking for biomedical evidence. Health operators, wishing to quickly assess and effectively extract the pertinent and relevant evidence they are looking for, have, contemporaneously, limited time to dedicate to evidence searching and enormous amounts of non-homogeneous information to scan. Research tactics and strategies emerge from the correct formulation of health queries. Posing the appropriate questions is therefore the first step of the process of retrieving clear and exhaustive answers, derived from guaranteed sources of biomedical information. The process continues with the complete identification and application of the correct method of research and economic retrieval of evidence, as also with its critical evaluation, synthesis and implementation. Knowing where and how to look for biomedical evidence in electronic databases is consequently a fundamental step in tracking the solution of a clinical problem in the perspective of Evidence Based Medicine and of any other evidence based health discipline, including what we have called "Evidence Based History of Medicine".