Canadian Medical Association Policybase

The Canadian Medical Association publishes policies and briefs on a wide range of health topics, representing the position of the CMA's members.

This database has long been available online, but is now powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface, and upgraded to the latest version of that in 2022.

The site is available at https://policybase.cma.ca and is hosted by Andornot within our Managed Hosting service.

The site offers users the features they expect from a modern search engine: spelling corrections, "did you mean" search suggestions, relevancy ranked results powered by sophisticated algorithms, and facets such as topic, year, and type of policy to quickly and easily refine a search.

Policies are available as PDFs linked from search results, and the full text of each PDF is indexed and searchable too. If any search words are found in the full text, a snippet of the relevant passage showing the words in context is displayed in search results. The user may then click a single button to open the policy in their browser with their search words pre-highlighted, where ever they may appear in the document. This feature saves the user from having to download, open and search all over again within the PDF for the relevant passage.

The site is available in English and French - not only the user interface, but all the metadata and PDFs too - allowing users to search and fully interact with the site in either language.

Policies are managed in a DB/TextWorks database by CMA Library staff.

Updating the CMA PolicyBase was long overdue. We needed to update the interface and functionality to make it more user friendly. While it seemed like an overwhelming task, Jonathan guided us through each step of the process. We're really pleased with the end result, so much so that we're now converting other databases to the Andornot Discovery Interface.
Debbie Ayotte, Associate Director, Policy Research & Support, Canadian Medical Association

A separate Physician Workforce Survey search engine is available at https://surveys.cma.ca and is also powered by our Andornot Discovery Interface and hosted by Andornot.

Contact Andornot for information management and search solutions for your medical and other collections.