Introducing CRIO’s New AI-Powered Search Engine

We’re excited to announce a powerful new feature for our users – an AI-driven search engine designed to make finding information in CRIO’s Help Center faster, more accurate, and more intuitive than ever before.

Let’s dive into how our new search functionality works, how you can access it, and how to use it effectively.

How Does It Work?

At its core, our new AI search engine is specifically built to handle your questions within the context of the CRIO Help Center. It operates using a restricted subset of our data (like user manuals, training materials, FAQs, and more).

CRIO Enterprise Architect Bala Nair on the technology behind this new feature: “Our new AI search engine leverages RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation), combining vectorized searches of our help desk content with advanced language model capabilities to deliver precise and accurate responses. By augmenting the model’s prompt with relevant, retrieved data, we significantly reduce the likelihood of incorrect answers, ensuring users get reliable information tailored to their needs.” 

Here is a step-by-step breakdown of how the search feature now works inside of CRIO:

1. Prompting: Begin your search by asking the agent a question. For example, “How do I create an unscheduled visit?”
2. Data Review: The agent first searches our data set to understand your query. Based on your input, the model looks for the most applicable responses based on information in our Help Center documentation.
3. Summary and Source Links: Once the model has located the necessary information, a concise summary of the information found, along with links to the original sources for further reading is then generated and shown to you. No outside information is involved, only CRIO documentation is used for summarization and response phrasing.
4. Tailored Responses: The AI model has been trained on over 500,000 pages of content, including 500 PDF documents, 200+ FAQs, and 50 articles.

How to Access AI Search

No special setup is needed! If you’re using the CRIO Site App, simply click on the question mark icon and use the search bar:

You can also access the search from the Help Center overview page:

Improvements Over Previous Search Functionality

CRIO Technical Product Manager, Euphie Zhou, had this to say when asked about what CRIO users can expect when trying out this feature: “Our new AI-powered search engine makes finding answers to your questions easy. By training the AI agent on documentation from our Help Center, CRIO users can now get quick summaries and access key resources, making the experience smoother and more intuitive overall.” Some key improvements over the previous search functionality include: 

• Summarization Capability: Previously, there was no summarization of results – the summaries generated after each search result make information easier to digest.
• Flexible Searching: No need to use the exact wording. By phrasing questions naturally, the AI model will find the most accurate answer from our Help Center.
• Multilingual Answers: The AI model’s summarized response will match the language that you prompt it with. (Note: Translations are based solely on the AI model, they are not official translations from CRIO. All Help Center and resource links provided remain in English).

FAQs

• How accurate is the AI?
  • Because our AI model pulls only from a specific, approved set of data, it offers accurate and reliable results. However, our team continuously reviews AI outputs, fine-tunes responses, and adjusts prompts to maintain accuracy.
• How is user data managed?
  • We prioritize user security. User data is not retained by the AI agent after searches and is not used to train the AI. No personal data is shared with the model, and nothing is stored or used for further AI training. Once your question has been answered, the AI agent forgets the data.
• What if the AI doesn’t answer correctly?
  • If you encounter inaccuracies, you can provide feedback directly within the Help Center by using the feedback feature built into the search.

Tips for Using 

• Use conversational dialogue when asking the agent questions. It is designed to respond naturally.
  • Ex: Instead of putting “Unscheduled visit” into the search bar, ask the AI “How do I create an unscheduled visit?”
• Share your feedback to help us improve. Use the feedback options to let us know if something isn’t working as expected.

What’s Next for CRIO + AI?

We’re just getting started with AI-driven innovation at CRIO. Study-specific protocol assistance and study design enhancements are among the areas we are currently looking into implementing AI based features.  Our overall goal is to leverage AI to shorten study initialization timelines and to help shorten the time to database lock. In all uses of AI, CRIO remains committed to prioritizing your data privacy and ensuring that new features remain in compliance with clinical trials standards. Stay tuned for more AI-enhanced features aimed at improving your experience.

We’re excited for you to try this new feature and look forward to hearing your thoughts!