This guide will take approximately 5 minutes to complete.
Intelligent search is designed to help users answer their questions more easily and efficiently. The user can enter a few keywords that are relevant to their question and the system will propose search topics to explore based on these keywords of interest.
In this guide you will:
- Learn how to answer a simple search topic related to a concept of interest
- Add complexity to your query
Step 0: Login
Refer to https://med.causaly.com
TIP! In case you’ve forgotten your password, you can recover it here.
A. Answer a simple question on Intelligent Search
Step 1: Use the Intelligent Search module on your homepage
Use the Intelligent Search on your Causaly home page (Figure 1).
Figure 1: The Intelligent search option, as displayed once you log into Causaly.
Step 2: Perform an Intelligent Search by typing keywords of interest
By typing into the input box a keyword [either disease, target or any other concept you have in mind], the platform will suggest concepts in a list. These concepts are linked to the UMLS ontologies the system uses and the number on the right illustrates the amount of relationships that exist in the platform for each of these concepts (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Concepts suggested when typing breast cancer. The number on the right indicates the amount of evidence in the platform for each of these concepts.
By clicking on your preferred option, the system will intelligently propose search topics that may be of interest, such as biomarkers of X, side effects of X etc, related to the option you selected. (Figure 3)
Figure 3: The suggested search topics after selecting the concept "breast cancer"
Note: The suggested topics are different based on what keywords are entered.
By selecting the most relevant one to your research objectives, you will be directed automatically on the results page.
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- To increase the sensitivity of your search the system includes certain narrower and related concepts when performing the search. To review which concepts have been selected by default by Causaly then once you have specified a concept, click on the down arrow next to the concept name and select: "View related concepts" (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Review the narrower and related concepts that fall under your selected keyword by clicking on the "View related concepts" option. - If none of the suggested search topics are relevant to your research query, you can add additional keywords within the input box of the intelligent search, such as outcomes, assays etc.
- If you have not found the concept or search topics you are looking for, you can ask your question in our live chat function and a Scientific Expert will get back to you with a search link along with a search strategy (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Use the live chat function when you have not found what you are looking for to be connected with one of our scientific experts.
Example: Treatments of breast cancer
Begin your search by entering into the input box a few keywords that describe your question.
In case you would like to find information about a treatment of a disease, or diseases associated with a gene, type the relative terms next to each other separated by a space. (Figure 6).
Figure 6: Search for the treatments of breast cancer by typing the terms “treatments” and “breast cancer” and selecting the relevant search topic.
After typing your keywords, the system will propose different searches related to the terms you typed. You can choose any of those options by clicking on it and explore the results (link).
TIP! All keywords that you type in the input box are automatically mapped on our dictionaries. When a term is mapped, it appears in blue.
Step 3: Select your preferred search topic and explore the results
Once you click on your preferred question, you get a list of results within a few seconds represented in a very user-friendly dendrogram view (Figure 7).
Figure 7: The dendrogram view when looking for treatments of breast cancer (link).
Before exploring the results in the dendrogram, investigate what the system has picked up by default on the UMLS filters. In the example above for treatments, you may prefer to exclude antibiotics or therapeutic procedures, for instance, and only focus on pharmacologic substances (Figure 8).
Figure 8: The filters that the system picks up by default when looking for treatments.- You can refine your results further by using the filter options on the left side of the page (Figure 9).
Figure 9: Refine your results further by using additional filters.
For more information on how to use these filters, click here.
B. Add complexity to your query
In the input box of intelligent search, you can add more complexity by adding as many keywords as you like and the system will suggest different searches every time, taking into account what you are typing (Figure 10).
Figure 10: Refine your results for the effects of BRCA2 mutations on breast cancer in mouse studies by adding the relevant keywords in the input box.
The proposed searches will now include the context of your choice and you can explore the results by clicking on the search.
To review how the system has performed the search in the background to display the results retrieved, click on the "Open in the Advanced Search" option below the input box of the Intelligent Search (Figure 11).
Figure 11: Click the "Open in Advanced Search" option to review what the system has automatically constructed after selecting the search topic of interest.
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- Similarly, you can look for target-disorder, drug-disorder associations, drug-drug interactions etc or any other relationship between two concepts of interest. For example, to look for the relationship between CFH gene and AMD, add the gene and the disease to the input box (Figure 12).
Figure 12: Causaly will propose the relevant search topics and you can directly select to look for the relationship between the two. - Click on the “Save” button to save your search and create alerts to receive notifications when new data for your search of interest become available (Figure 13).
Figure 13. Click on the “Save” button to save searches.
Want to learn more about how to find evidence in Causaly ?
Find more information and examples on step-by-step guides by clicking here.