The MCC improves search for users

The Medical Council of Canada (MCC) sought a technology solution that would improve search for its business users and leverage its SharePoint 2010 environment. The goal of the organization is to provide a high level of medical care to Canadians through the evaluation of physicians. It assesses more than 11,000 medical students and graduates annually through its examinations, which are offered in sites across Canada. Its Evaluating Examination is offered in more than 500 locations in 80 countries.

To improve search, the Medical Council of Canada chose to implement conceptClassifier for SharePoint from Concept Searching, which specializes in semantic metadata generation, auto-classification and taxonomy software. Bruce Smith, information and privacy manager at the MCC during the project, says, “The improvements to search results were noticeable immediately after implementing conceptClassifier for SharePoint.”

The Medical Council of Canada is pleased with the results, according to Concept Searching. Among the goals the MCC has achieved through the implementation or is in the process of achieving are to:

• visibly improve the accuracy and relevance of search results;
• include a relevance model that provides the ability to tune search results;
• allow the search administrator to collect data on search-related user behavior;
• support secure mobile access to enterprise systems and information;
• leverage rich, semantic metadata;
• minimize (or remove) user involvement in the application of document metadata; and
• use a distributed search model rather than search based on a singular, central repository.