Using the Research Hub

Introduction

The Research Hub is Theator's AI-powered research workspace. It brings the surgical intelligence in your Theator library — automatically captured video, structured surgical steps and events, and case metadata — together with an AI research assistant that guides you "from exploration to publication." You can move from an initial idea to a defined cohort and a first draft of your abstract in one place.

The Research Hub is available to administrators. If you don't see it, contact your Customer Success Manager to confirm your access.

Finding the Research Hub

Open the Research Hub from the left sidebar. Your work is organized into projects, listed down the left side of the screen — use the search box to find a project, or the + button to start a new one. Each project keeps its own research question, patient cohort, supporting materials, and draft, along with the full history of your conversation with the AI research assistant, so you can leave and come back without losing context.

The workspace at a glance

The Research Hub has two working areas:

• The AI research assistant (left) — a conversational assistant. When you start a project it greets you and offers quick starting points such as I have a research question, Explore my data first, Search the literature, and Build a patient cohort. You can also type any question into the Ask a question… box at the bottom.
• The project workspace (right) — organized into three tabs: Research, Materials, and Article. It's the source of truth for your study, and the manuscript is written from it.

Everything you build in the workspace stays tied to the current project and is saved automatically as you work.

How the workflow works

The Research Hub guides you through a study in five phases, one at a time:

Question → Cohort → Data points → Analysis → Article

A few things to know about how you and the assistant collaborate:

• You review and approve each step. When the assistant prepares something new — a cohort, a table, an analysis — it shows an approval card describing what's in it and why. Nothing is saved until you approve it; nothing happens silently.
• One step at a time. The assistant pauses for your input between steps, and you can jump ahead or backtrack at any point.
• The workspace is the source of truth. Everything you approve lands in the Research, Materials, and Article tabs, and the manuscript is drafted from there.

For a quick in-app tour, open the ⋯ (Research Hub actions) menu and choose Tutorial.

Working with the AI research assistant

Use the assistant the way you'd brief a research collaborator. You can:

• Ask questions about your surgical data — for example, "What factors affect operation duration?"
• Ask it to build or refine a cohort based on inclusion and exclusion criteria you describe.
• Ask it to search the literature or summarize what it found.
• Ask it to draft your research question or abstract, then edit the result yourself.

The assistant works from the data in your Theator library and the context of your current project, so as you refine your question and cohort, its answers become more specific to your study.

The Research tab

The Research tab is the active work surface for the current study:

• Progress — tracks where you are in the five-phase workflow; each step lights up as you complete it, and you can jump back to any step at any time.
• Research Question — the clinical question the session is built around. Type your own, or ask in chat and the assistant will help you shape one. Everything that follows is anchored to this question.
• Study Cohort — the group of cases your study draws from. Upload a list of case IDs, or ask the assistant to build a cohort from filters such as procedure, venue, and dates. Your final analysis group is narrowed from here once you know which cases have everything the study needs.
• Abstract Draft — a structured IMRAD draft (Title, Objective, Methods, Results, Conclusion, Keywords). Write it directly, or have the assistant draft it from the materials you've built, and edit any section in place.

Because Theator captures cases continuously and automatically, your cohort is drawn from a comprehensive, representative sample rather than a manually recorded subset — which helps reduce selection bias in your study.

The Materials tab

The Materials tab holds the building blocks the assistant prepares for you — all cited automatically when you draft the article:

• Files — spreadsheets and documents you upload (CSV, XLSX, PDF). The assistant can load these as working tables and reference them in the analysis.
• Tables — working data tables the assistant builds, such as patient baseline, lab values, durations, and derived metrics. Each table arrives as an approval card with sample rows and notes before it lands here.
• Analyses — statistical results such as comparisons, correlations, and regressions. Each analysis records the method, the test choice, the result, and a clinical interpretation, so you can cite it directly in the article.
• References — literature the assistant finds (PubMed and others) plus any papers you save; these are cited automatically when you draft the article.

Each section also has an + Add option so you can contribute materials yourself.

The Article tab

The Article tab holds the Article Editor, where you develop a full draft beyond the abstract. It works best once you've completed your research question, defined a cohort, and run your analyses — then you can generate a draft and edit the text directly in the editor, or write it yourself and ask the assistant to help refine it.

Managing your projects

Each project is saved for you automatically and listed on the left. Open a project to pick up exactly where you left off — the assistant's conversation history and every workspace tab are restored. To remove a project, open the ⋯ menu next to its name in the project list and select Delete.

Sharing a project

You can share a project with a colleague so they can open your research question, cohort, materials, and draft.

1. Open the project you want to share.
2. Open the Research Hub actions menu — the ⋯ button in the top-right of the header — and select Share. (The same menu also holds Tutorial, Downloads, and Export.)
3. In the Share "" dialog, enter a colleague's email under Send link via email to and press Enter to send them a link to the project.
4. Everyone you've shared with is listed under Shared with in the dialog.

Exporting your work

When your draft is ready, use the actions in the Research Hub header to export or copy your work out of the platform for submission or further editing.

Get help

Have a question about a study, or want hands-on support? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or contact us at support@theator.io. Theator's clinical and support teams can help at every stage — from defining your question to preparing your manuscript for submission.