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The AI Pathway Builder proposes structural changes to a participant pathway as inline “ghost” suggestion cards — faded previews that appear in the pathway editor alongside your existing content. You accept, reject, or accept-and-continue each suggestion; the AI updates the underlying CRF version only on acceptance.

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What It Does

Three AI tools are available when you are editing a CRF version (participant pathway): The AI decides which tool to call based on your prompt and the current state of the pathway. A typical flow is outline → detail-per-section → targeted edits to refine individual question groups.

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Where It Runs

  • Open a CRF version and open the AI Agent side panel.
  • Ask the AI to help build or modify the pathway. For example: “Draft a pathway for a 12-week safety follow-up with screening, baseline, week 4, week 8, and end-of-study visits.”
  • Suggestions render inline in the pathway editor — not in the chat panel.
Only Draft CRF versions are editable. Testing, Approved, and Retired versions are locked, so suggestions cannot be applied to them — copy them as a new draft first. See Pathway Versioning.

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Ghost Suggestion Cards

Suggestions appear as dashed-border cards positioned where they will be inserted:
  • Green cards — new sections, question groups, or activities to add
  • Orange cards — edits to existing content, shown as a diff with added, removed, and unchanged lines highlighted
Each card carries three buttons: When suggestions are off-screen, a sticky “N suggestion(s) above/below” button appears in the editor so you can scroll to them.

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Auto-Continuation

Accept and continue is the fastest way to build a pathway end-to-end: accept an outline, then let the AI populate each section one suggestion at a time, reviewing as you go. Behind the scenes the editor sends the AI a short “continue where you left off” prompt so you do not have to re-describe what you want on every step.

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PDF-Driven Extraction

You can seed the AI with a protocol PDF:
1

Upload the Protocol

Upload the PDF to Study Documents.
2

Attach to the Chat

Open the AI Agent side panel in the pathway editor and attach the PDF.
3

Ask for a Pathway

Prompt the AI to draft a pathway based on the schedule of activities in the document.
4

Review Suggestions

The AI extracts the PDF contents (preserving tables, lists, and section structure) and proposes matching pathway structure as ghost cards.
Extracted PDF content is cached. Re-attaching the same document in a later conversation is instant.

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Permissions

Using the AI Pathway Builder requires the Study AI Prompts permission. Roles that carry it by default:
  • Chief Coordinating Investigator
  • Deputy Coordinating Investigator
  • Study Administrator
Users without this permission still see the CRF version they are viewing, but the AI tools do not appear in their chat panel.

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Best Practices

Ask for the outline first, review and adjust, then ask for section detail. It is easier to course-correct at the outline level than after a hundred questions are proposed.
Rejecting a bad suggestion teaches the AI faster than editing it post-acceptance. Use Reject generously.
Always build or refactor pathways inside a Draft CRF version. You can promote to Testing and then Approved when you are confident — see Pathway Versioning.
Attach the protocol PDF so the AI can ground suggestions in your actual study design rather than general clinical convention.

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Limitations

  • AI Pathway Builder operates only on CRF versions (participant pathways), not study pathways or site workflows.
  • Suggestions are best-effort. Always review clinical logic (eligibility, conditional branching, scoring) before approving a version.
  • The AI cannot modify locked versions directly — Testing, Approved, and Retired CRF versions are immutable by design.

Pathway Versioning

Draft, Testing, Approved, and Retired lifecycle.

Conversational AI

The AI Agent side panel and model selection.