Research Platform Published in Annals of Vascular Surgery 14 ESVS Guidelines Unified

Multi-guideline decision support for vascular surgery

From Static Chatbot to Agentic Clinical Companion

ClinicalGuidelines.io is being re-engineered from a single-guideline GraphRAG assistant into a context-aware vascular surgery agent that routes across 14 guidelines, asks for missing clinical details, and responds with citation-grade evidence.

14

ESVS guideline books aggregated into one unified vascular decision-support environment.

Router

Identifies the correct guideline pathway instead of forcing clinicians to search manually.

Context Gate

Intercepts underspecified cases before recommendation output is allowed to proceed.

Traceability

Recommendation-grade evidence is surfaced with preserved source alignment and citation logic.

The System Triages Queries Like a Vascular Consultant

The core shift is not only better retrieval. The platform now decides what kind of clinical question it has received, whether the case is answerable, and whether critical context is missing before advice is returned.

Knowledge Questions

Pure guideline questions proceed directly to routed retrieval, producing concise answers grounded in the most relevant source sections.

Complete Patient Cases

When mandatory clinical variables are present, the case is validated, routed, and answered with traceable recommendation-level justification.

Incomplete Patient Cases

A dedicated Context Gate intercepts unsafe or underspecified scenarios and generates structured clarification prompts instead of premature recommendations.

Protected Clinical Text

PHI de-identification and multi-turn change detection keep the pipeline focused on clinical reasoning while reducing downstream privacy and state-tracking risks.

The Previous Study Established the Validation Baseline

Before the move to a multi-guideline agentic system, the original guideline-locked application was benchmarked against expert-level answers and demonstrated non-inferior performance with explicit citation control.

This published validation work is the foundation for the new platform layer now being extended into multi-guideline, context-aware vascular decision support.

90.5%

AI Performance Score

vs 77.8% for committee exemplars

Non-Inferior

Across All 12 Metrics

p < 0.001 safety margin

Zero

Hallucinations

100% citation lock-in

Architecture That Behaves Like a Clinical Companion

The new system moves beyond passive retrieval. It interprets intent, checks whether the case is sufficiently specified, and only then decides how to retrieve and frame the evidence.

01

Pre-retrieval interpretation

The incoming query is classified as a knowledge request, a complete case, or an incomplete case requiring clarification.

02

Guideline Router Service

The request is directed across the correct guideline domain rather than forcing the user to know where the answer lives.

03

Context Gate

Mandatory clinical parameters are checked before advice is produced, preventing unsafe recommendations from underspecified cases.

04

Dual-channel retrieval

Narrative chunks provide nuance while structured recommendation chunks carry the citation-grade decision signal.

05

Traceable response layer

Outputs return with source-linked justification, preserved traceability, and resistance to cross-guideline contamination.

Prospective Multicenter Validation with HSVES

The next stage is designed to move from internal technical validation to real-world case testing in conjunction with the Hellenic Society of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery.

Clinical validation pathway

HSVES brings the bridge to real-world vascular practice

The proposed prospective program is centered on multicenter assessment against real vascular surgery cases, with the explicit goal of testing whether an auditable, multi-guideline agent can support decision quality at the bedside without sacrificing transparency or clinician control.

The strategic value is simple: an agent that asks for missing details before it speaks is materially closer to the workflow of an experienced consultant than a static chatbot that only retrieves text.

Publications

Peer-reviewed work tracing the evolution from general-purpose LLM benchmarking to guideline-locked clinical decision support in vascular surgery.

1

Alexiou VG, Sumpio BE, Vassiliou A, Kakkos SK, Geroulakos G.

Artificial Intelligence in Diagnosing and Managing Vascular Surgery Patients: An Experimental Study Using the GPT-4 Model

Ann Vasc Surg. 2025 Feb;111:260-267. doi: 10.1016/j.avsg.2024.11.014. Epub 2024 Nov 24. PMID: 39586530.

Established the early benchmark for how foundation models handle vascular surgery decision-making before the guideline-locked architecture was introduced.

Presentations

ClinicalGuidelines.io has also been presented across major vascular meetings, moving the platform from publication into live international discussion.

Oral Presentation 2025

39th ESVS Annual Meeting

Istanbul, Türkiye

23-26 September 2025

Session window
Tuesday 23 September, 13:00 - 17:30
Reference
AS-ESVS-2025-00397
Abstract
An Artificial Intelligence companion app that provides expert-level interpretation of clinical practice guidelines
Conference Presentation 2025

SITE Barcelona 2025

Barcelona, Spain

15-17 October 2025

Showcased the ClinicalGuidelines.io concept within the endovascular meeting circuit, reinforcing interest in guideline-aware vascular AI beyond the manuscript setting.

Congress Presentation 2026

25th Panhellenic Congress of Vascular & Endovascular Surgery - Angiology

Larissa Imperial, Larissa, Greece

19-21 March 2026

Session
Friday, 20 March 2026, 09:00 - 10:00
Session 3: Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship in Vascular Surgery
Talk
No Hallucinations, Just Guidelines: CE-Marking an AI Companion as a Medical Device

Scientific Leadership

A multidisciplinary leadership group spanning vascular surgery, academic medicine, and translational clinical AI.

Vangelis Alexiou, MD, PhD

Vascular Surgeon & Developer

University Hospital of Ioannina, Greece

Areti Vassiliou, MD, MSc

Vascular Fellow

Attikon University Hospital, Athens

Prof. Bauer E. Sumpio, MD, PhD

Professor of Surgery

Yale University School of Medicine, USA

Prof. George Geroulakos, MD, PhD

Professor of Vascular Surgery

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Prof. Stavros K. Kakkos, MD, PhD

Professor of Vascular Surgery

University Hospital of Patras, Greece

Join the Next Validation Phase

Request access to the beta or register interest as a clinical validation collaborator. Approved clinicians will be redirected to the secure chat interface.