Cognition Technologies Introduces True Meaning-Based Linguistic Search

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cognition Technologies, Inc. today announced the commercial release of CognitionSearch™, its evolutionary meaning-based linguistic Search technology. CognitionSearch dramatically increases the Precision and Recall of search results when compared to traditional Search methods and technologies.

“CognitionSearch is enabling our doctors and nurses to be more efficient by increasing the relevancy of their Search results and allowing them to find information in the MEDLINE database which would be extremely difficult to find with other Search engines.”

Based on computational linguistic science, CognitionSearch, a patented technology, has, in essence, “taught” the computer the meaning of virtually all of the words and phrases in the common English language. As a result, CognitionSearch “understands” both the user query and the content of the documents being searched, which enables the software to deliver higher performance in the areas of precision and recall, the two main metrics that are commonly used to evaluate the effectiveness of Search engine technology. Precision refers to a Search engine’s ability to return accurate relevant results (e.g. eliminating ambiguity), while Recall describes the breadth of the universe of relevant results (e.g. synonyms).

“The most significant and, until now, unsolved problem facing Search technology has been how to increase the precision of Search results without sacrificing recall, and vise versa,” said Scott Jarus, CEO of Cognition Technologies. “CognitionSearch solves this problem by ‘understanding’ what the user is asking, and then returning only those results which are relevant to the query. As an example, CognitionSearch understands the difference between a ‘bat’ used in baseball and a ‘bat’ that flies around in a cave. It also understands that the word ‘bill’ has seven different meanings, which are dependent upon the context of the query or sentence to resolve the word’s understanding. CognitionSearch will forever change the way people evaluate the quality of their Search results.”

Powered by human knowledge and experience and built one word and concept at a time, the underlying technology in CognitionSearch has been in development for more than 20 years. It required more than 300 man-years of effort by a team of renowned computational linguists and computer scientists. CognitionSearch software is initially being offered to enterprise customers in the litigation support (legal) and life sciences markets. In addition, CognitionSearch is now available for use by the general public through the company’s demonstration Website at www.cognitionsearch.com. Website users have the ability to search very detailed and deep content in the areas of health, politics, government and legal. New content will be added to the Website on a regular basis.

Background

Virtually all of today’s popular Search engines use similar, statistically-based “pattern matching” technology, which lacks real understanding of the meaning of words both in the user query and in the Search results. This lack of word meaning is the cause of great frustration by users who are both overwhelmed by the volume of Search results and disappointed by the lack of relevancy of Search results. In addition, pattern matching Search engines only retrieve content based upon the actual words entered in the query, which creates another hidden problem that most users aren’t even aware of – the incomplete retrieval of information from the universe of possible Search results. If a user fails to enter a term which may be synonymous with what they are looking for (e.g. “automobile” as a synonym for “car”), any documents which use only that synonym won’t be retrieved. In contrast, CognitionSearch, through its use of linguistic and mathematical algorithms, “understands” the meaning of a user’s query, including related words, phrases or concepts, and applies that understanding to the available Search universe. This “understanding” results in significantly greater precision, relevancy and completeness of the results.

“The improvements we’ve experienced in the precision and recall of our Search results are amazing,” said Philip Bosco MD, director of trauma services, Sutter Roseville (CA) Medical Center. “CognitionSearch is enabling our doctors and nurses to be more efficient by increasing the relevancy of their Search results and allowing them to find information in the MEDLINE database which would be extremely difficult to find with other Search engines.”

For more information about Cognition Technologies, visit www.cognition.com. To use CognitionSearch, the company’s specialized Search demonstration Website, visit www.cognitionsearch.com.

About Cognition Technologies

Cognition Technologies has developed the next evolution in Search technology. The company’s patented meaning-based linguistic Search technology, CognitionSearch™, dramatically increases the Precision and Recall of search results. Unlike traditional Search technologies, which don't understand the meaning of query terms or results, CognitionSearch, based upon computational linguistic science, has “taught” the computer the meanings of virtually all of the words, phrases and concepts in the common English language.