DistillerSR is an AI-enabled platform that manages the full literature review workflow with a transparent, auditable process designed for accurate, reproducible results. It introduced AI for reference screening as a concept in 2009, and later added deterministic AI to automate deduplication, labelling and classification, and much of the screening process. It now uses purpose-built generative AI to human-in-the-loop full text data extraction and summarization. Collaboration and reuse features help teams avoid duplication of effort and maintain consistency and efficiency by automatically maintaining a curated repository of previously reviewed papers. DistillerSR has a strong focus on copyright compliance for AI-supported workflows and is the only literature review platform with direct integration to Embase. It can also support very large projects, with more than 500,000 references per project.
DistillerSR to accelerate and improve systematic reviews
Systematic reviews can be slow, error-prone and hard to scale. They often become the bottleneck before evidence-based projects even start. DistillerSR is being rolled out to help fix that, so that teams can move through the first step faster, keep reviews current over time and streamline research and guideline development work.
“Built in Canada, DistillerSR was the world’s first platform for systematic reviews automation, and remains the market leader today,” says Peter O’Blenis, the company’s CEO. “We are pleased to partner with CHEO RI to support researchers across the Faculty of Medicine to help support their important research.”
DistillerSR is faster and more consistent than manual approaches. Teams report 35-80% reductions in overall literature review time by providing automation at every stage of the process. University case studies show screening times cut by about half, with some groups completing the same work 90% faster than spreadsheet-based processes. A national health organization reported saving about two hours per human reviewer per day on screening and data extraction. DistillerSR is widely used by top tier medical device and pharmaceutical companies, and is also used by government agencies globally, including within the Government of Canada. For example, it supported critical research during the COVID-19 pandemic, where both speed and accuracy were vital.
“Built in Canada, DistillerSR was the world’s first platform for systematic reviews automation, and remains the market leader today.”
Peter O'Blenis
— CEO, DistillerSR
The rollout of DistillerSR is being coordinated through the CHEO Research Institute, with an in-kind pool of licenses for the Faculty of Medicine and affiliated institutes. The company offers helpful online training materials for new users, and we are also establishing a community of practice for ongoing support.
To get started with DistillerSR, send an email to [email protected] requesting access to a license and to be added to the community of practice.