Conversations and Knowledge Tools
Revisit prior work and use MARCUS knowledge views without losing the connection to source evidence.
MARCUS can preserve a question-and-answer exchange and can also organize project evidence into reusable views. These features help with repeated review, comparison, and project maintenance. They do not turn generated content into approved policy.
Current data boundary: MARCUS is an institutional non-PHI workspace. Do not enter PHI, patient identifiers, patient-specific clinical facts, credentials, secrets, or other prohibited data in questions, titles, tags, notes, tasks, or generated artifacts.
Audience and Availability
This page is for clinicians, educators, project owners, and reviewers who already have access to an organization and a project.
Conversation history is part of the core workflow. Bookmarks, tasks, collections, source briefings, Knowledge Pages, themes, evidence matrices, and graph views appear only when your organization has enabled them and your access permits them. If a control described here is absent, that usually reflects workspace configuration or permissions rather than an error.
How the Pieces Connect
Knowledge path
How library evidence becomes a knowledge page
Knowledge pages begin with current library sources and a fresh review of the themes those sources contain.
Ready sources
The project library supplies the current searchable material.
Discover themes
MARCUS identifies recurring subjects supported across the sources.
Plan the pages
The current themes shape which knowledge pages should be prepared.
Synthesize evidence
MARCUS writes each page from the source material selected for that topic.
Review the page
The clinician reads the synthesis and follows its evidence links as needed.
Grounded page
The same indexed project sources support several ways of working:
- A conversation preserves a question, its answer, and its citations.
- A bookmark gives you a personal shortcut back to a useful message or item.
- A task records a personal follow-up when that feature is available.
- A collection limits review to an approved group of sources.
- A source briefing summarizes one document.
- A Knowledge Page, theme, evidence matrix, or graph organizes evidence across multiple sources.
Each view should lead back to the underlying sources. If it does not, treat the content as an orientation aid rather than verified evidence.
Continue a Conversation
MARCUS saves completed exchanges so you can search for and reopen them. Depending on the available controls, you may also rename, pin, tag, classify, or delete a conversation.
When you ask a follow-up question, MARCUS can use the prior exchange as context. That helps preserve the topic, but it does not remove the need to review the new answer's citations. A follow-up can find different passages, and the supporting source set may change from one answer to the next.
A safe follow-up sequence
- Reopen the conversation in the correct organization and project.
- Confirm that the earlier question still describes the topic you intend to review.
- Ask one focused follow-up, such as: “Which sections of the approved pathway describe reassessment timing?”
- Open the new citations rather than relying on the prior answer.
- Start a new conversation if the project, policy set, or clinical topic has changed materially.
Who can see a conversation
Do not assume a conversation is private to its author. Current conversation storage and search are scoped to the organization. Authorized people in that organizational workspace may be able to find or administer conversation content.
Personal bookmarks and tasks are tied to the individual account, but their text still must follow the non-PHI boundary.
Use Bookmarks and Tasks
A bookmark can return you to a conversation message, library item, task, or other supported item. Use a short, descriptive label that contains no patient information.
Where tasks are enabled, a task can be open, completed, dismissed, snoozed, or suggested and may include priority or due-date information. Tasks are organizational aids, not orders, clinical reminders, or part of a medical record. Keep the task tied to document review, for example:
- Review the updated perioperative antibiotic policy.
- Confirm that the older pathway has been removed from the project.
- Compare the two approved discharge checklists.
Work Within a Collection
A collection groups selected sources so a user can browse or ask questions against that narrower set. A collection may be visible across the organization or private to invited collection members. Collection access can include owner, editor, and viewer capabilities.
Before using a collection:
- Read its title and description.
- Inspect which sources it contains.
- Check whether the source versions and dates fit your purpose.
- Confirm that your question is actually limited to that collection when the interface shows a collection scope.
Private collections do not make copied or shared output private. Sharing and export actions have their own access boundaries.
Read a Source Briefing
A source briefing is a generated overview of one document. It may include a summary, key points, tags, source evidence labels, and the date the source was indexed.
Use a briefing to decide whether a document deserves closer review. Do not cite the briefing itself as the authoritative text. Open the source or a cited passage to confirm exact wording, qualifications, tables, and dates.
Briefings and other enrichment can finish after a source becomes ready for questions. A missing briefing does not necessarily mean that the source is unavailable for search.
Use Knowledge Pages
Knowledge Pages organize a project topic across multiple sources. MARCUS first identifies themes and then drafts sections that are linked to supporting evidence. Quality checks may reject an attempted page rather than publish it as accepted content.
When a Knowledge Page is available:
- Read the page title and scope.
- Review the listed evidence sources.
- Open the citations for each important claim.
- Check related pages and backlinks for overlap or conflict.
- Treat version, regeneration, link-copying, and export controls as workflow tools, not institutional approval.
A generated Knowledge Page remains a synthesis aid. It is not automatically a ratified guideline, protocol, policy, or consensus statement.
Use Themes, Matrices, and the Graph
Themes
Theme analysis identifies recurring topics across a project. It can help reveal what the library discusses often and what may be missing. A theme is a machine-organized pattern, not a clinical conclusion.
Evidence matrices
An evidence matrix places evidence from several sources side by side. Use it to compare what each source says about the same field or question. When edits, notes, retries, analyses, or exports are available, preserve a clear distinction between:
- text supported by a source passage
- a reviewer-entered note
- a generated synthesis
- a missing or unresolved cell
Any relevance or support cue is a review aid, not a calibrated probability that a claim is correct.
Knowledge graph
The graph displays relationships among sources and concepts. It generally needs at least two indexed sources before it can show useful connections. Coverage and freshness views can help locate sparsely supported or older areas, but they do not certify completeness or currency.
Expected Result and How to Verify It
A well-maintained knowledge workflow should let you move from a saved question or organized topic back to the exact source evidence.
Verify that:
- the active organization and project are correct
- the artifact names the sources it used
- important claims open to a passage, page, or section when available
- reviewer notes are distinguishable from generated text
- older or conflicting sources remain visible rather than being silently merged
- exported material retains enough citation information for independent review
Common Problems
| What you see | What it may mean | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| A conversation is missing | You may be in another organization or project, or the exchange may not have saved | Check the active context, search again, and look for any save warning |
| A follow-up drifts from the topic | The prior exchange is too broad or the new question changed scope | Ask a narrower question or start a new conversation |
| No Knowledge Pages appear | Generation may not have run, may be queued, or may be unavailable in your workspace | Check the project status and ask a project owner or administrator |
| A page is rejected or still generating | Evidence or coherence checks did not pass, or background work is incomplete | Review source coverage and wait or regenerate only if the control is available |
| A graph is empty | Too few ready sources or too few detected relationships | Confirm at least two relevant sources are indexed |
| A matrix cell is empty | The selected sources may not contain support for that field | Do not fill the gap by assumption; inspect the sources or mark it unresolved |
| A briefing is missing | Optional enrichment may still be running or may have failed | The source may still be usable for questions; verify its ready status |
Safety Checklist
- Never place PHI, patient-specific facts, credentials, or secrets in any saved text field.
- Assume authorized organizational administrators may have visibility into workspace activity and question-level logs.
- Recheck source passages before using a saved or generated artifact for an important decision.
- Treat exports and copied links as new disclosure events and apply your organization's information-sharing rules.
- Keep generated synthesis clearly labeled when moving it outside MARCUS.
Continue Reading
- Previous: Questions, Answers, and Citations
- Next: Collaboration and Administration
- Related: Using Knowledge Surfaces, Reading Source Briefings, and Glossary