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What the AI Assistant Can and Can't Do

Dotan Asselmann

The AI Assistant answers questions about your surgical data and can look at a specific moment in a case video when you point it there. It does not watch an entire recording on its own, and it can only read data that is part of your Theator account — not free-text hospital records like dictated post-op notes or lab-result documents. This article explains where those limits are so you know what to expect.

What the AI Assistant Is Built to Do

The AI Assistant works with the surgical data in your Theator account. You can ask it to:

  • Count and filter your cases ("How many cholecystectomies did I perform last month?").
  • Report operative times, benchmarks, and best-practice adoption.
  • Analyze an individual case and compare it to your personal and peer averages.
  • Surface technique clips and build learning collections.

For a walkthrough of the basics, see Getting Started with the AI Assistant.

Can It Analyze My Surgical Video?

Yes, for a specific moment. While you are watching a case, you can ask the assistant about the moment on screen — for example, "What is happening here?" or "Is the cystic duct clipped?" — and it will look at the video frames around that point and describe what is surgically visible. It reports only what it can clearly see and will not guess at findings it cannot confirm.

It does not review the whole recording on demand. The assistant will not watch a full case from start to finish to pull out a metric on its own — for instance, it cannot scan an entire video to total up estimated blood loss. Point it to the moment you want it to look at, and it will describe that moment.

To see the moment as a playable clip in chat, ask the assistant to show you a clip of that part of the video. To download a clip or share the case with a colleague, ask the assistant to download the clip or share the case — those are separate actions.

What Clinical Data Can It Reach?

The assistant reads the surgical data that lives in your Theator account, including:

  • Case and procedure details, dates, and operative times.
  • AI annotations, annotation statistics, and the case timeline.
  • Surgical practices, outcomes, and flags.
  • Labs and diagnoses recorded in Theator.

It does not read free-text hospital records that are not part of your Theator data — such as dictated post-op notes or free-text lab and radiology reports. If you can see a value in your hospital chart but the assistant says it cannot find it, that record most likely is not connected to Theator at your site.

For the full breakdown of what the assistant can and cannot read — and why a request sometimes comes back empty — see What Data Can the AI Assistant Access?.

Other Limits Worth Knowing

  • Everything is permission-scoped. The assistant only returns data you already have permission to view.
  • It does not write, edit, or submit clinical documentation. Use the chat to search and analyze your surgical data; clinical records are created and modified elsewhere. To learn where operative reports are created, see Can the AI Assistant Write or Access Operative Reports?.

What's Next?

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