Using the principles of evidence-based medicine, the TRIP Database strives to rapidly answer clinical questions from healthcare professionals.

The search engine may look simple (with nothing more than a few links and a search box on the home page) but its functionality is robust. TRIP displays only results that are evidence-based (i.e. systematic reviews, evidence-based synopses), guidelines, textbooks, etc. This targeted retrieval model allows for deeper analysis of results and less filtering of results. On the left sidebar of the results page, the types of publications are listed, making it easy to limit to these specifics if needed. Also, it’s possible to see how many articles yielded from your query were retrieved from Medline’s PubMed. To the right of the search results there is a box with this information; also another limiting factor.

Registration is possible with TRIP and allows for curation of search results; saving searches, reviewing search history, exporting and emailing citations, and the like. There is also an advanced search option that is useful in searching several terms and choosing between finding them in either the entire document or just the title. There is also a field where years can be entered if your search calls for a distinct time frame.