Working with Medbot
Every review has one conversation with Medbot, shown on the left of the review workspace (the Medbot tab on a phone). Medbot knows which stage you are looking at (Working on <stage>) and has tools for that stage: it can refine the question, draft criteria, search PubMed, read articles, explain decisions and rewrite the report.
Medbot uses the review’s model, which cannot be changed from the conversation. Only the review’s owner can talk to Medbot; people the review is shared with can read the conversation.
What you can ask at each stage
| Stage | What Medbot can do |
|---|---|
| Question | Frame the question as PICO (or PECO for exposures), ask you up to three questions at a time, and flag choices that would make the review too narrow or too broad. |
| Criteria | Draft and revise the inclusion and exclusion lists. |
| Search strategy | Run live PubMed searches, test terms, add limits (for example a date range), and propose one to three search strings. |
| Search, Screening, Eligibility | List and read articles, explain a decision by quoting the reviewers’ reasons, change a decision, and re-run up to 50 named articles. |
| Eligibility, Synthesis | Re-extract an article’s data, and change one GRADE domain with a reason. |
| Synthesis | Read the synthesis and rewrite the wording of a section. Medbot never changes the numbers; to change them, change the data or grades and run Synthesise again. |
| Any stage | Set pause points, and switch the review between automatic and manual. |
The input box suggests what to ask at each stage, for example Ask Medbot to change a string, add a limit or test a term on the search strategy, or Ask about a decision, or ask Medbot to change one on screening.
After a reply, Medbot may offer two to four short replies as chips under its message. Click one to send it.
Proposals
When Medbot drafts something (a refined question, criteria, search strings, a re-extraction or a new wording for a report section), it does not save it. The conversation shows a line such as Proposed inclusion and exclusion criteria with a Show in <stage> button, and the stage panel shows the proposal next to what is saved, with the changes marked. You decide:
- Keep proposal saves it to the review.
- Dismiss throws it away.
A dot on a stage in the stepper means a proposal is waiting there.
Approvals
Some actions change the review directly: overriding a decision, re-running articles, changing a GRADE rating, setting pause points, or switching mode. For these Medbot asks first with a card, Medbot asks to: <what it will do>, for example Exclude article 12 at screening (Wrong population), as your decision. Click Approve or Decline. The conversation then records Done: … or Declined: ….
Buttons that talk to Medbot
Several panel buttons send Medbot a message for you, so the work happens in the conversation where you can follow up:
| Button | Message sent |
|---|---|
| Refine with Medbot (Question) | Look at the question again. Is anything missing, or would anything make the search too narrow or too broad? |
| Agree and draft criteria | The question is agreed. Please draft the inclusion and exclusion criteria. |
| Refine with Medbot (Criteria) | Please review the criteria again and propose improvements. |
| Agree and build the search | The criteria are agreed. Please build and test the PubMed search strategy. |
| Rebuild with Medbot | Please rebuild and re-test the PubMed search strategy. |
| Ask Medbot about this article | Asks Medbot to explain the article’s decision and the reviewers’ reasons. |
| Refine (on a report section) | Asks to change that section of the report. Medbot asks what to change if it is not clear. |
The run log
As the pipeline finishes each stage, it writes a status line into the conversation, for example Retrieved 812 records from PubMed. or Screened titles and abstracts: 96 included, 716 excluded. In an automatic review this is the live log of the run. Tool activity also appears as one line each, such as Searched PubMed: 1,204 matches (click to see the query) or Read article 7.