ExpertMapper does most, but not all, of the work needed to find an expert for your problem in your area. To get the most out of ExpertMapper, keep the following points in mind.
As an extreme example, Nome, Alaska is unlikely to have an expert in any of the conditions in ExpertMapper's database. But even larger cities may not have experts (as we define the term) in common disorders.
You may, therefore, need to expand the geographic area in which you are searching for experts.
All experts that we identify have published articles on your medical condition. Some of these experts care for patients, others do not. See the Picking Clinical Experts page.
There is no way to tell if an expert has retired (or worse), except by noticing they have not published in recent years.
ExpertMapper may not find the best specialist for your particular condition or for your desired treatments. This is particularly true for the more general or more common medical conditions. For example, if you search on breast cancer, you will find experts in reading mammograms along with expert surgeons, medical oncologists, and radiation therapists. You should be careful to look at the results to identify the type of expert that you are seeking.
The physicians that ExpertMapper identifies may not accept new patients, or may not accept new patients who have your health insurance. You will have to contact the physicians to confirm their policies and practices.
Due to limitations of Medline, ExpertMapper may occasionally list the same person under different variations of his or her name.
For example, if John Quincy Adams publishes articles as JQ Adams and as J Adams, ExpertMapper treats them as different people.
Mis-spellings of an expert's name will also mislead ExpertMapper.
For example, John Adams and Joseph Adams may both be counted as "J Adams."
The most noticeable cases of name-sharing apply to Asian names, where literally dozens of different experts may share a name. If you enter the topic "Genetics," for example, you will see that each of the top expert names published well over 100 articles in the most recent year and that the "address" fields of these articles are wildly different from each other. These are signs that multiple persons are using the same name.
Because experts move, the address listed for an expert may no longer be valid, or the address listed may be that of a coauthor.
ExpertMapper will often provide several estimates of an expert's location, listing the best estimates first. We recommend verifying each expert's location with the links provided to Google and to on-line hospital directories.
ExpertMapper does not know every city and institution in the world. For that reason, you will see locations such as "unknown city in Florida" or "unknown institution in Sacramento."
ExpertMapper is sensitive to spelling errors. For example, it will not recognize "Jon Hopkin" as "Johns Hopkins."
ExpertMapper occasionally mis-reads a location. For example, the abbreviation for both the state of Virginia and the Veterans Administration is VA, so ExpertMapper sometimes confuses Virginia with VA Hospitals. If you see an error like this, please let us know.
A retracted publication counts heavily against its authors and affiliated institutions. Sometimes, however, this is unfair, as in cases where the medical journal is at fault (e.g. Pubmed #12801955) or when an author is writing about a retracted paper, and that writing is classified as a retraction.