The Internet can be a powerful clinical tool for medical professionals who seek to access the latest news in the industry. However, the prevalence of unrelated and unreliable results poses a problem, especially for emergency department professionals.

When working in emergency medicine, doctors need quality, reliable information fast. Since Google has its limits and drawbacks, one doctor — Timothy Peck, M.D. — decided to create a new emergency medicine search engine.

As Google grew in popularity and added options like Google Scholar and Google Health, some medical professionals began to use the search engine as a helpful diagnostic aid.

In fact, the British Medical Journal published a study on "Googling for a Diagnosis — Use of Google as a Diagnostic Aid: Internet Based Study" in 2006. The study concluded that Web-based searching, specifically with Google, proved helpful in many cases, especially when physicians needed assistance diagnosing difficult cases.

The release of Google Scholar in 2004 offered medical professionals a tool that focused on websites providing critically appraised information from reputable sources. However, one study published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal took a closer look at Google Scholar and its performance when searching for medical topics. Unfortunately, the study found that Google Scholar searches often landed on older articles, failing to provide more recent, relevant results.

Although Google and other top search engines may still prove helpful as a medical tool in specific situations, they have serious limitations for use among emergency department staff. ED users often have complicated medical questions that could result in misleading search results. As previously noted, Google searches can result in both outdated and misinformed results for medical professionals, which unfortunately doesn't render it as a credible source.

The idea of a search engine for emergency medicine remained in high demand. In response to this, a new specialized search engine, iClickEM, is emerging, catering to the unique needs of medical professionals working in the ED.

According to TeachMD, the blog of Timothy C. Peck, M.D., one of the co-creators of iClickEM, the search engine provides "an opportunity to improve the way we as an EM community share knowledge." The new site works much like a medical library and only hosts content relevant to emergency medicine.

The design of iClickEM is unique, continuing to improve search results as medical professionals continue to use it. Peck notes that every time emergency medicine physicians use the search engine, they'll be helping to improve the results offered by the search engine.

For example, if one ED physician finds a useful reference on a specific topic, the system notes the reference as a quality resource, making it appear higher in search results when someone else uses the same search terms. Since the site is only for professionals within the emergency medicine community, physicians do not need to worry about the results being diluted.

In December, 1,000 individuals were provided with access to the beta version of iClickEM, according to TeachMD. Although iClickEM has started as an experiment, it may soon become a go-to source for EDs around the world, since finding quality information fast is a top priority within an emergency environment.