I look for zebras

I look for zebras because other doctors have ruled out all the horses
 
Declared Dr. Gregory House of the eponymous television show House, drawing attention to the popular expression of calling a rare disease diagnosis “a zebra” by the medical community. In an attempt to weed out the horses, Danish researchers have built FindZebra- a search engine designed exclusively for medical professionals to diagnose rare diseases. The builders of this search engine have recognised the shortcomings of Google search engine, which can yield several non-specific search results in response to a query. FindZebra is an open-source search technology, which uses curated, freely available medical information from sources such as the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database, the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center and Orphanet. The open-source retrieval tool Indri is used to search and the results are produced on the FindZebra website. The algorithm used to construct this website has been described in detail in a recent article by Dragusin et al. in International Journal of Medical Information. The layout of this website is simple, much like Google, with a search bar and basic information on the site. Entering the query, for eg., phenotype of a patient (flat nose, cleft palate, protineuria), into the search bar will result in 20 search results in descending order of most to least relevant. As emphasised on the website, this search engine is not for the general public but a resource only meant for medical professionals. It must also be noted that there are other search engines that cater to the rare disease community such as the Phenomizer
Consult the PubMed abstract

source: eurordis