Smart Screener brings AI extraction into Criteria-Based Screening:
- After configuring your Screening Criteria, generate Smart Screener.
- The AI will answer Yes/No answers for each criterion without prior training.
- View answers alongside annotations on the main Screening page
- Use these answers to guide your screening decisions.
Note: Smart Screener works independently to our inclusion probabilities in our screening model. Smart Screener is based on the answers to your criteria/questions, and the screening model is trained on your applied screening decisions.
Steps for Using Smart Screener #
Generate Smart Screener #
On the Configure Screening page, after you have created criteria, select “Smart Screener” in the top left. Here, you have a few settings to configure before generating:
- Abstract & Full Text: Select whether you want the AI to answer the questions for study Abstracts or Full Texts — to do both, you’ll have to run two separate generations. Ensure you have criteria created in the corresponding section before generating.
- Refresh: Check Refresh if you change the Screening Criteria and wish to re-generate smart screener for all records.
- Unscreened Records Only: Check to have Smart Screener run only on studies with no screening decision applied/that are unscreened.
- Annotations Required: Checked by default to only answer questions when an annotation is attached. You may wish to uncheck if annotations are less important for your review.
Note: the study limit for generating Smart Screener for Abstracts is 5000 studies and for Full Texts is 1000 studies. Then hit “Generate”.
Manual Screening with Smart Screener Assistance #
Once Smart Screener has finished, navigate back to the Screening page. You’ll see each question in the form has been answered (but still editable, of course). Typically an annotation is provided if the question was answered yes, with no annotation is the answer is no. This form of answered questions allowing a reviewer to scroll through, view the total count at the end and assign a screening decision to advance/include or exclude.
Bulk Decisions with Thresholding #
If you’d prefer to avoid manual screening and apply the AI suggestions without review, you can do so via Thresholding.
- After generating Smart Screener, navigate back to Configure Screening and select “Thresholding” in the top left (red below)
- Select the type of criteria you’d like to apply this threshold to, Abstract, Full Text or Both
- Select a threshold number: the number refers to the number of questions answered “Yes”
- Select the action to apply threshold of the options provided
For example, if you select Type of Criteria: Abstract, Threshold: 2, Include at or above threshold, Exclude below, then all study abstracts that have been assessed by Smart Screener that have answered “Yes” to 2 or more questions in the criteria will be included. All other study abstracts will be excluded. This is customisable as the criteria differ in number and importance from review to review.
- You may also wish to preview the set of records that this action will apply to, studies that will be Included and those that will be Excluded.
- Once you are happy with your threshold set, select “Apply Threshold”.
As with manual screening, applying this threshold will result in advanced/included records moving to the next stage of screening or data extraction (depending on your Screening mode).
