Systematic Reviews in the Health Sciences

This is a template tool that is intended to help you refine your PICOS question for your systematic review. It was developed for use with Perplexity AI but could potentially be used with other chatbots like Copilot or ChatGPT.

Please note that AI tools are constantly evolving, and may be prone to factual and logic errors. Use this tool with caution, and take care to evaluate the outputs that the AI tool generates.

How to use:

• Go to Perplexity AI. Create an account (or use your Google Account to sign in) if you want to save your prompts for later viewing and tweaking.
• Read the contents in Inputs 1 and 2 below. These are the instructions you will give to the AI. Input 1 will be copy-pasted as-is (unless you want to modify it). Input 2 needs to be filled in with your PICOS elements.
• After you’ve filled your PICOS elements into Input 2 (below), copy the full text of input 1 (below) and paste it into Perplexity. This tells Perplexity a bit about you and your needs regarding this prompt exercise. It also directs Perplexity to consult its own knowledge base about systematic reviews and PICOS before continuing.
• When Perplexity confirms that it’s fine to proceed, copy the full text of Input 2 (with your own specific PICOS elements filled in) and paste into the Perplexity chat. Perplexity will provide feedback and suggestions for improvement on your PICO elements.

Prompt Inputs:

Input 1: copy-paste into Perplexity:

I am a medical researcher planning a systematic review. I am trying to refine my research question based on the PICOS framework, which consists of the following elements: (Patient/population; intervention or exposure of interest; comparator intervention or exposure (if applicable); outcomes of interest; study design).

Please take some time to gather any information from your training or the web on the PICOS framework, then confirm that you understand what should go into a PICOS question and are ready for me to provide you with my PICOS elements.

Input 2: [if an element is not applicable to your question, put “not applicable” next to that element].

Here is my PICOS question framework. Please provide me with feedback on each element, particularly on concepts that could be made clearer or more specific:

P - Patient, Population or Problem

I – Intervention or Exposure:

C - Comparison or Control:

O - Outcomes:

S - Study Design: