Getting Started with the AI Assistant

What is the AI Assistant?

The AI Assistant is Theator's conversational AI tool designed to help surgeons and clinical leaders get fast, meaningful answers about their surgical data. Instead of navigating through dashboards and filters, you can simply ask a question in plain language and receive relevant insights in seconds.

Watch: AI Assistant in Action

This short walkthrough shows how to open the AI Assistant, ask questions in natural language, generate a surgical practice profile, and analyze individual cases with benchmarks.

How to Access the AI Assistant

1. Log in to the Theator platform.
2. Look for the AI Assistant option in the left sidebar.
3. Click it to open the assistant, or navigate directly to app.theator.io/ai-assistant.

The AI Assistant opens in a chat-style interface with a personalized greeting. You'll see suggested prompts to help you get started — such as Analyze my last case, Surface teaching cases, and Profile my surgical practice — or you can type your own question in the input field at the bottom.

What Can You Ask?

The AI Assistant can search across your cases, analyze trends, and surface insights from your surgical data. Here are some example questions to get you started:

• "How many cholecystectomies did I perform last month?"
• "What is my average operative time for hernia repairs?"
• "Show me cases where a critical view of safety was achieved."
• "Compare my complication rate to the department average."
• "Which procedures had the longest length of stay this quarter?"

You can ask about case volumes, surgical practices, outcome metrics, trends over time, and comparisons against department benchmarks.

When you ask a question, the AI Assistant shows its thinking process as it searches your data, then responds with a structured answer. At the bottom of each response, you'll see follow-up suggestion buttons that let you explore related questions with a single click.

Types of Responses

The AI Assistant returns different types of rich, structured responses depending on your question.

Practice Profile

Ask the assistant to "Profile my surgical practice" and it will generate a comprehensive overview of your activity — including total case counts, case mix, primary procedures, and the facilities you operate at.

Case Analysis with Benchmarks

Ask to "Analyze my last case" and the assistant will review your most recent procedure in detail. The response includes clinical insights, operative time benchmarks comparing your performance to your personal average and peer averages, and key procedural statistics.

Each case analysis ends with a teaching point and contextual follow-up suggestions so you can continue exploring related topics.

Tips for Getting the Best Results

• Be specific. Include procedure types, date ranges, or metric names when possible. For example, "Show my sleeve gastrectomy cases from January" will return more focused results than "Show my cases."
• Ask follow-up questions. The assistant maintains context within a conversation, so you can refine your query without repeating details.
• Use natural language. You do not need special syntax or keywords. Write your question the way you would ask a colleague.
• Try the suggested prompts. Click on the suggestion buttons after each response to quickly explore related insights without typing.
• Explore different angles. Try asking about volumes, durations, practices, outcomes, and comparisons to discover insights you may not have considered.

What Happens Behind the Scenes

When you submit a question, the AI Assistant interprets your intent, searches across your authorized surgical data, and returns a structured answer. It may include case counts, benchmark tables, clinical insights, video frame highlights, or links to specific cases depending on the query. All responses are scoped to the data you have permission to view.

Your conversation history is saved in the sidebar, so you can return to previous conversations at any time.

The AI Assistant is a powerful way to stay informed about your practice without spending time building custom reports. Give it a try and see what you can learn.

What's Next?

• Performance Profile — View your personal performance analytics
• Case page Overview — Explore your surgical cases in detail
• Exploring Best Practices and the Catalog — Discover standardized best practices