For decades, academics have spoken about the sheer weight of information as the biggest barrier to research progress. Experts believe that a single doctoral thesis can require reviewing hundreds of papers, while systematic reviews in medicine often stretch beyond a year.
A 2022 study published in BMJ Open found that healthcare reviews take an average of 67 weeks to complete, largely because of the slow and repetitive process of screening, extracting, and synthesising evidence.
A new kind of research software is changing how academics work. AnswerThis, an AI-powered research assistant, created by Ayush Garg and Ryan McCarroll, claims to bridging the gap between. “Our main goal is to solve one of the hardest problems in research, turning piles of dense academic papers into clear, citation-accurate insights in hours instead of weeks,” Garg said.
What the tool does
Garg said that AnswerThis users can search across more than 200 million papers, upload their own documents, and manage everything in one place.
The system produces line-by-line outputs backed with citations, ready to be used in reviews, grant proposals, or theses. It works in cycles, just like real research: finding sources, pulling out structured findings, building literature reviews, refining questions, and updating results without starting all over again.
Interestingly, it also connects smoothly with tools researchers already use, like Zotero and Word, so they don’t need to change their habits. “This has helped it spread beyond students and professors to consultants and healthcare professionals who also need to manage complex evidence,” he explained.
How it’s being used
As per the experts, in academia, PhD students are cutting literature review timelines from months to weeks while keeping their reviews live as projects evolve. In healthcare, researchers are sorting through clinical trials and guidelines, pulling out structured evidence, and keeping full citations intact.
“Our mission is simple and ambitious,” said Garg. “We want to remove friction from how knowledge is discovered, synthesised and shared, so people can reason at the pace they think.”
Adding to that, McCarroll said, “We build for power users first. If a PhD student or a clinical researcher can trust the citations, organise their library and iterate quickly, everyone else benefits.”
