Biomedical Search Strategy Builder

Problem

When building systematic review or clinical evidence searches, the difficult part is often not opening a database, but assembling PICO, synonyms, MeSH, field tags, and database syntax into a query that avoids missed papers and excessive noise. Manual Boolean strings can have unbalanced parentheses, confused AND/OR precedence, missing controlled vocabulary, or PubMed syntax pasted into Embase, Web of Science, or Cochrane without adaptation.

How It Works

The skill turns a research question into a usable search strategy:
- Clarify the question: confirm topic, target database, study type, date range, and PICO.
- Map concepts: identify MeSH headings, free-text synonyms, and whether to use explosion.
- Build Boolean logic: join synonyms with OR, connect concepts with AND, and output both line-by-line and single copy-paste versions.
- Add filters: apply date, publication type, language, or species filters only when justified.
- Adapt across databases: translate PubMed syntax into Embase Emtree, Web of Science TS=, or Cochrane CENTRAL patterns.

Boundaries

It only constructs search strings. It does not run live PubMed searches, retrieve result lists, summarize papers, fabricate citations, or estimate result counts. If the user provides only a broad topic such as “cancer”, the skill should ask for scope. Uncertain MeSH terms should be flagged for verification in the MeSH browser.