Whereas conventional keyword and related article searches result in long and not always informative lists of abstracts, navigation along the gene network allows for a stepwise and controlled exploration of the information space. Each step through the network produces just the information pertaining to one single gene and its interactions. The exploration of this gene guided information network is intuitive and close to the associative organisation of human memory, in which information is retrieved by connecting similar concepts.
The precision of gene name and synonym identification in iHOP ranges between 87% and 99% depending on the organism. Because researchers can move between sentences taken directly from their source abstracts, however, they always retain control over the reliability and significance of information. This is an advantage over systems which translate the protein network from the literature into graphical representations, because these representations could give a misleading sense of confidence to the users and cloud the significance of individual associations.

Click here for the technical implementation of the iHOP concept.