✏️ Define a Search Strategy

This page provides important information and best practices to ensure the quality of your query.

💡 Contact us with the in-app chat or by email if you encounter any problems during this guided tutorial.

Step 1. Define your Search Strategy

The query is the space where you define the search keywords you want to search for. It works like the search bar on Google, with some advanced construction possibilities. Therefore, the first step is to define your Search Strategy.

You can use the following questions to help you define your search strategy:

1. What are the devices concerned by this Incident Search?
   1. Note down the names of devices + name of your brand
      1. examples: Evo-X, Elektra Medical
2. What are the competitive devices concerned by this Incident Search?
   1. Note down the names of competitive devices + names of the competitive manufacturer
      1. examples: InIt-3, Siemens
3. What are the device categories and types of devices concerned by this Incident Search?
   1. Note down all the different device categories and types of devices
      1. examples: blood pressure monitor, dental implant
4. What are the intended uses of your devices?
   1. Note down keywords describing problems, diseases, or impacts your devices solve or bring to patients.
      1. examples: hypertension, diabetes
5. What are the precise technical components or technology of your devices?
   1. Note down the names of technologies or technical components.
      1. examples: Lithium-ion Battery, Bluetooth 5.1

Step 2. Understand basic operators

Check the page Understand Boolean Operators before starting to write your query.

_{Visual representation of boolean operators}

 

In Flinn, see a definition of all operators available by clicking on All operators on the right side of the query builder, a side panel will open:

Step 3. Write down your query

This is the time to write down your query. The purpose of this step is to combine your keywords from your search strategy, using operators to generate as focused and qualitative results as possible.

Depending on your devices and search strategy queries can go from very simple keywords combination like:

( disposable OR sterile ) AND syringe

to more elaborated queries with multiple operators and keywords such as:

(( disposable OR disposables OR single-use ) AND ( syringe OR syringes ) OR ( insulin AND lymphatic AND perfusion ) OR ( Perfo-ultra 3 OR Perfo-light X )) AND NOT ( Canula OR Canulas )

You can follow those best practices to create a qualitative query:

1. Avoid generic keywords alone
   1. example: Defibrillator OR...
      1. It’s better to combine such keywords with more precise keywords fitting your device to avoid irrelevant results
         1. example: ( Defibrillator AND Automated AND External ) OR...
2. Consider acronyms and synonyms
   1. example: ( Defibrillator AND Automated AND External ) OR AED OR...
3. Don’t forget to consider plural terms
   1. example: ( (Defibrillator OR Defibrillators) AND Automated AND External ) OR AED OR...
4. Organize your query using line breaks and spaces
   1. Try to keep your query understandable using line breaks between different parts. Line breaks are not considered as an OR, you always have to specify which operator you need between different lines.
      1. example: ( (Defibrillator OR Defibrillators) AND Automated AND External ) OR AED OR...
5. Exclude keywords that would bring irrelevant results

   1. example: ( ( (Defibrillator OR Defibrillators) AND Automated AND External ) OR AED ) AND NOT Electrode

      

Et voila! You wrote your first boolean query, well done! 👏🎉

Important information:

💡 Currently, Flinn supports English and German keywords. Other languages won’t break the query but might not bring any results.

💡 The search execution is case insensitive meaning that you don’t have to care about upper (capital) or lower (small) letters. The word ‘Monitor’ will return reports containing both ‘Monitor’ and ‘monitor’.

💡 Line breaks are not considered as an OR, you always have to specify which operator you need between different lines.

💡 Please always use an operator between 2 keywords, as our system will not be able to properly execute the search if there is a missing operator. For this, either use the AND operator or, for an exact search, please use quotation marks.

 ⚠️ Always remember to execute your Search by clicking on ‘See results or “Apply changes’ to save your current configuration version.

 

Step 4. Verify and Execute your search

Important information:

💡 This is the step where you save your search configuration.

Now it’s time to verify your query. To do so, follow the verification procedure:

Verification procedure

1. Verify that the query does not contain unwanted characters like ;,/! etc..
2. Verify the use of operators
   1. all brackets () must in pairs and be closed
   2. all quotation marks “” must be in pairs and closed
   3. all operators and keywords must be separated by spaces
3. Verify that you have chosen a date frame and a set of databases

If you have successfully completed all the previous steps, you are now ready to execute your search. To do so, simply click on the See Results button located in the bottom right corner.

Executing the search will save all the search configurations until you make further changes. Upon successful execution, you will be directed to the Results tab where you can view the Results list.

 

Step 5. Access the Results List

Congratulation, you have successfully created, configured, and executed your first search! 🎉

You can now view the results generated by your search configuration. For detailed information about the Results List Page, please refer to the Results list page. This resource will help you understand every feature and column available.

Once you have a good understanding of how the table works, you can begin opening reports by clicking on a specific row.

Important information:

💡 Flinn allows a maximum of 10,000 results to be queried for a single search. If a search produces 10,000 results, it indicates that there may be even more results beyond the limit.

⚠️ Please note that every time you click the Apply changes button in the configuration space, all previously queried results will be overwritten. If you want to try a different configuration while retaining the existing results, create a new query and replicate the configuration for editing.

 

Step 6. Enhance your query

To obtain high-quality results, it is likely that your query will require some improvements. To achieve this, explore the current results to identify overly generic or irrelevant keywords. Use these findings to refine and enhance your query.

Improvement Example:

1. Currently, my query is generating 10 000+ results
   1. my query: ( ( (Defibrillator OR Defibrillators) AND Automated AND External ) OR AED ) AND NOT Electrode
2. I have identified the following:
   1. Many irrelevant pacemakers devices reports are present in my results
   2. Many Automated External Defibrillator devices which do not include a monitoring technology like my device
3. I refined my query with those learnings:
   1. my query: ( ( (Defibrillator OR Defibrillators) AND Automated AND External AND Monitor ) OR AED ) AND NOT ( Electrode OR pacemaker OR pacemakers )
4. I execute my query and now get 274 results

By increasing the quality of results, you will increase the proportion of included results, meaning results that possibly contain important incidents for your company.

💡 Advanced operators such as Product Code or Exact Term can also be valuable in enhancing the quality of your query. For a detailed explanation of each operator and best practices, please refer to the following page: Create an advanced boolean query

---

 

We hope that this guide was helpful. Don't hesitate to send feedback to feedback@flinncomply.com and help us improve this guide.