Speed and accuracy of online searches by legislators and medical students using RefBin's opioid use disorder database

Background: Literature regarding opioid use disorder (OUD) is often difficult for nonscientific communities to access. The OUD database on RefBin categorizes scientific findings and may facilitate access to information regarding OUD.Objectives: To evaluate if the RefBin OUD database improves access to information about OUD for policymakers and medical students.Methods: 31 medical students and 13 individual policymakers completed this study. Using a cross-over method, participants answered questions about OUD. Speed, accuracy, confidence, and satisfaction metrics were collected and compared between searches that used RefBin vs other resources chosen by participants.Results: At baseline, medical students reported being comfortable with scientific literature and familiar with OUD. Policymakers reported low comfort levels with scientific literature and variable familiarity with OUD. Within the medical student sample, the odds of answering correctly were 2.43 times higher for RefBin searches than for searches using resources other than RefBin (non-RefBin searches) (p = .005; 95% CI: (1.31, 4.51)). For policymakers, the odds of answering correctly were 3.65 times higher for RefBin vs non-RefBin searches (p = .0496; 95% CI: [1.002, 13.279]). Medical students reported feeling confident in their results 50.7% of the time when using RefBin, compared to 28.3% with non-RefBin searches (p = .006).Conclusion: When compared with searching using non-RefBin sources, searches performed using RefBin resulted in improved accuracy and efficiency for both medical students and policymakers. This demonstrates the potential utility of the RefBin OUD database in improving access to reliable information about OUD.