The results thrown up by a Google search are "completely arbitrary", says Wallace.

They can also be to some extent gamed by professional 'search engine optimisers'.

Google's "page rank" results are based on how many websites link to a particular document.

For the medical profession, however, there is a greater need for quality information resulting from searches.

"The bulk of valuable data in this space is unstructured."

Three years ago, Wallace and her team of 30 people worldwide - 20 of them based in Dublin - began looking at ways to develop search sofware that would "mine" millions of documents in patent databases, clinical drug trials and patient records in order to help a doctor better diagnose and treat patients.

Social networking concepts, like the social bookmarking website del. icio. us, will allow a collection of medical professionals, for instance, to rank information according to how valuable they find it, rather than relying solely on what Wallace calls the more arbitrary methods Google uses.

"The goal in the whole medical space is to find that needle in a haystack, " said Wallace.

"The eureka moments happen when someone can see the overlaps between chemistry and microbiology, for example, and come up with a new solution."