The Robert Koch Institute (RKI): main building in Berlin. more
Germany’s Public Health institute RKI monitors the population’s health and wellbeing. more
The Robert Koch Institute is the German government's central institution for the identification, surveillance and prevention of infectious diseases in the Portfolio of the German Ministry of Health. more
Performing effective literature searches is an essential part of the research process in general and particularly indispensable for the systematic Evidence Syntheses produced by the long COVID Group of the RKI.
To facilitate this task, the Robert Koch Institute’s long COVID Group worked in cooperation with the preVIEW COVID-19 service of the ZB MED – Information Centre for Life Sciences and with the Narrative Service of the Specialised Information Service Pharmacy - PubPharm in creating tools dedicated to searching scientific literature on long COVID. The Specialised Information Service Pharmacy - PubPharm is a cooperation project between the University Library and the Institute for Information Systems at the Technische Universität Braunschweig.
preVIEW: COVID-19 is a public semantic search engine for COVID-19-related preprints that compiles results from several preprint servers. Modern text mining methods combined with different search functionalities increase the chances of retrieving relevant scientific preprints.
Based on a manually selected training database, a long COVID classifier was developed and is constantly refined and improved through user feedback. The preVIEW: COVID-19 was designed and created by ZB MED as part of the NFDI4Health - Task Force COVID-19 project (DFG Project Number 45126528). The service can be accessed through the following link: long COVID classifier in preVIEW: COVID-19.
A detailed description of the functionalities offered by preVIEW: COVID-19 as well as the classification of long COVID in the system is available in the article Langnickel et al. (2022): Continuous development of the semantic search engine preVIEW: from COVID-19 to long COVID.
The Narrative Service of the PubPharm Databank was developed with the intention of generating precise search results. For that purpose, the service makes it possible to conduct searches for statements, each consisting of a subject (e.g., a medication) and an object (e.g., a disease).
Users can generate precise search results using direct search. Additionally, variables can be employed in the search in order to produce structured overviews of the literature. Using ‘example queries’, pre-set searches for long COVID or the possible therapeutic treatment approaches to long COVID, the Narrative Service offers a simplified search option for researchers and those affected by the condition.
Literature:
Project Team ZB MED preview
Lisa Kühnel
Juliane Fluck
Project Team PubPharm (TU Braunschweig)
Hermann Kroll
Wolf-Tilo Balke
Christina Draheim
Stefan Wulle
Robert Koch-Institut
Denise Ducks
Katharina Heldt
Date: 04.05.2023
