Inciteful Med isn't a chatbot, it's a research tool. A typical question takes 30 seconds to 2 minutes from start to finished report, and complex questions on broad topics can take longer.

What's happening during that time

When you ask a question, Inciteful Med:

Plans the research (what to search for, in what order)
Searches PubMed and other sources, often running multiple parallel searches
Reads the most relevant papers in detail
Drafts an answer with citations
Polishes the report

You can see which phase it's in via the progress bar at the top of the thread. See Following research progress for what each phase means.

You can navigate away

Once a research run starts, it keeps running on our servers even if you close the tab or switch threads. When you come back to the thread, the in-progress (or completed) report is waiting.

When to be patient

Complex condition questions (cancer, autoimmune, rare diseases) - more sources to evaluate
Broad questions ("what's the best treatment for X?") - many possible angles to cover
Questions that pull in clinical trials - extra search step

When to follow up instead of restarting

If a report is taking a long time and you decide you'd rather narrow the scope, don't cancel and start over. Wait for the first report, then ask a follow-up question - follow-ups are faster because they reuse research the system already did.

When something is actually wrong

If a thread is stuck on the same status for more than 10 minutes, or you see an error banner, contact us with the thread URL and we'll take a look.