, STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT EXISTING SEARCH SYS-CURRENT QUESTION AN...

1999), studies have shown that existing search sys-

Current question answering systems aspire to

tems, e.g., PubMed, the U.S. National Library of

address this shortcoming by gathering relevant

Medicine’s search engine, are often unable to sup-

“facts” from multiple documents in response to

information needs. The so-called “definition”

ply physicians with clinically-relevant answers in

or “other” questions at recent TREC evalua-

a timely manner (Gorman et al., 1994; Cham-

tions (Voorhees, 2005) serve as good examples:

bliss and Conley, 1996). Clinical information

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Disease:Chronic ProstatitisIanti-microbial