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Updated: May 18, 2026

Biosensor-based High Throughput Biopanning and Bioinformatics Analysis Strategy for the Global Validation of Drug-protein Interactions
Published on: December 1, 2020
Making processes reliable: a validated pubmed search strategy for identifying new or emerging technologies.
Leonora Varela-Lema1, Jeanette Punal-Riobóo, Beatriz Casal Acción
1Galician Agency for Health Technology Assessment (avalia-t), Galician Department of Health, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. avalia-t1@sergas.es
A validated Medline search strategy effectively identifies new health technologies for horizon scanning. This approach achieved 83% sensitivity in detecting emerging innovations within two years of publication.
Area of Science:
- Health Technology Assessment
- Bibliometrics
- Medical Informatics
Background:
- Horizon scanning systems require robust methods to identify novel health technologies.
- Existing methods for identifying emerging technologies can be resource-intensive and lack systematic validation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a Medline bibliographic search strategy for systematically identifying new and emerging health technologies.
- To assess the efficacy and sensitivity of the proposed search strategy using a defined period and key journals.
Main Methods:
- Developed a Medline search strategy combining free text terms for innovation with specific field index terms.
- Assessed search performance by analyzing retrieval over one year (2009).
- Validated sensitivity by comparing search results against manually scanned abstracts from key and high-impact journals.
Main Results:
- The search strategy identified 6,228 abstracts, classifying 459 as new or emerging technologies.
- Manual scanning of 12,061 abstracts from selected journals identified 35 relevant new or emerging technologies.
- The Medline search strategy successfully identified 29 of these 35 technologies within two years of publication, achieving 83% sensitivity.
Conclusions:
- The validated Medline search strategy is effective for horizon scanning of new health technologies.
- This approach can simplify and standardize the process of identifying emerging innovations.
- Adaptations may be necessary based on the specific scope of horizon scanning systems.
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