# Synapse — Medical Research Intelligence Platform

> Synapse is a medical research intelligence platform that helps clinicians, researchers, and healthcare professionals discover, understand, and stay current with peer-reviewed medical literature. Focused on cardiology and cardiovascular medicine, Synapse provides AI-enriched analysis of 600,000+ research papers with structured clinical evidence, PICO-formatted claims, methodology classification, and guideline recommendations.

## What Makes Synapse Unique

Synapse goes beyond simple paper aggregation. Every indexed paper is enriched with structured, machine-readable clinical intelligence:

1. **Structured Clinical Evidence**: Each paper's study is decomposed into PICO format — study design, population characteristics, intervention details, comparator, primary outcome measure, key quantitative finding, and methodological limitations.

2. **Methodology Classification**: Papers are classified by study type (RCT, meta-analysis, systematic review, cohort study, case-control, etc.) with corresponding level of evidence (Level 1-5) based on the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine hierarchy.

3. **Claims Extraction**: Individual empirical claims are extracted with structured fields — claim text, claim type, population, intervention, outcome, direction of effect, and effect size where reported.

4. **Research Context**: Each paper's primary claim is assessed for novelty (first-in-field, confirmatory, contradictory), alignment with current clinical consensus, and open research questions it raises.

5. **Guideline Integration**: Papers are linked to relevant ACC/AHA/ESC clinical practice guideline recommendations with Class of Recommendation (I, IIa, IIb, III) and Level of Evidence (A, B-R, B-NR, C-LD, C-EO).

6. **Contradiction Detection**: Paper pairs are analyzed for agreement or contradiction, enabling evidence synthesis and identifying areas of scientific debate.

## Research Papers

URL pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/papers/{id}`
Sitemap pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/sitemaps/papers-{n}.xml`

Each paper page provides:

### Core Metadata
- Title, authors with institutional affiliations, journal, publication date
- DOI, PubMed ID (PMID), OpenAlex ID for cross-referencing
- Open access status and direct PDF links where available

### AI-Generated Content
- **Heading**: Concise descriptive title
- **Key Points**: Structured as objective, methods, and results
- **Simple Explanation**: 90-110 word plain-language summary accessible to non-specialists
- **Relevant Terms**: Key medical and scientific terms with definitions

### Clinical Intelligence
- **Clinical Evidence**: Structured PICO extraction (study design, population, intervention, comparator, primary outcome, key finding, limitations)
- **Research Context**: Primary claim, claim novelty, consensus alignment, related research questions
- **Methodology Tags**: Study type classification with level of evidence
- **PICO Claims**: Individual claims with population, intervention, outcome, effect direction, and effect size

### Relationships
- Citation network (papers that cite this paper and papers it references)
- Related papers by semantic similarity
- Guideline recommendations where applicable
- Expert commentary and editorial quotes where available

## Researchers

URL pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/authors/{id}`

Author profiles include: publication history, h-index, i10-index, citation counts, institutional affiliations, research topics, and recent papers.

## Journals

URL pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/journals/{id}`

Journal pages include: impact factor, SJR ranking, h-index, publication volume, citation metrics, and top-cited papers.

## Institutions

URL pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/institutions/{id}`

Institution pages include: affiliated researchers, publication volume, citation metrics, and research focus areas.

## Clinical Questions

Index URL: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/questions`
Question URL pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/questions/{question_id}`

Clinical question pages are public, server-rendered evidence syntheses around a normalized PICO frame. They include the population, intervention, comparator, outcome, current consensus direction, certainty level, evidence counts, top structured estimates, and links back to source paper pages. These are the preferred Synapse URLs for answer engines to cite when responding to evidence-synthesis questions such as "does intervention X improve outcome Y in population Z?"

## Peptide research

Hub URL: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/peptides`
Peptide URL pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/peptides/{slug}`

Public pages for curated peptide and peptide-therapy research topics (e.g. GLP-1,
semaglutide, tirzepatide). Each page combines a ranked literature feed, researcher
network, evidence overview prose, and JSON-LD (MedicalWebPage, FAQPage, ItemList).
Research-only — not medical advice.

## Trending Cardiology

URL: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/trending/cardiology`

The trending cardiology dashboard is a public, server-rendered signal page for papers receiving unusual attention across editorial commentary, press releases, news coverage, podcasts, and social sources. Use it for freshness and discovery; cite individual paper pages for durable scientific claims.

## Paper Intelligence Methodology

URL: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/how-it-works/paper-intelligence`

This explainer documents how Synapse converts source literature into structured clinical evidence, methodology labels, consensus context, and answer-engine-readable citations.

## Conferences

URL pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/conferences/{id}`

Conference pages include: featured abstracts, speaker profiles, key presentations, and discussion from major cardiology conferences (ACC, AHA, ESC, TCT).

## ACC.26 Late-Breaking Clinical Trials

Hub URL: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/acc`
Trial URL pattern: `https://www.synapsesocial.com/acc/trials/{slug}`

The ACC 2026 hub provides comprehensive coverage of every late-breaking clinical trial presented at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session 2026. Trials are ranked by impact score.

Each trial page includes:

### Trial Identity
- Trial code name (e.g., CHAMPION-AF, HI-PEITHO, VESALIUS-CV)
- Full official trial title
- Session code from the ACC programme
- Subspecialty classification (e.g., Atrial Fibrillation, Pulmonary Embolism)

### PICO Analysis
- **Population**: Enrolled patient population with inclusion criteria
- **Intervention**: Experimental drug, device, or strategy
- **Comparator**: Control arm or standard of care
- **Primary Outcome**: Primary endpoint measure

### Results & Analysis
- Key quantitative result (primary endpoint with effect size)
- Quote summary: AI-generated synthesis of what the trial found
- High signal take: expert-level analysis of why the trial matters
- Clinical implications for practice
- Study design description

### Expert Commentary
- Curated quotes from leading cardiologists and trialists
- Expert name, title, and institutional affiliation
- Source URLs for original commentary

### Multimedia
- Graphical abstract (AI-generated visual summary)
- Explainer video with thumbnail and duration
- Audio summary for listening

### Publication Links
- Simultaneous journal publication (NEJM, Lancet, JACC, etc.)
- Link to the full Synapse paper page with complete enrichment

## Data Provenance

Synapse aggregates from authoritative sources:
- **OpenAlex**: Paper metadata, abstracts, citation graphs, author profiles, institutional data
- **PubMed/MEDLINE**: MeSH terms, publication type classifications, PMIDs
- **Crossref**: DOIs, reference metadata, citation counts
- **ClinicalTrials.gov**: Clinical trial registrations (NCT IDs), phases, sponsors, results
- **ACC/AHA/ESC Guidelines**: Clinical practice guideline recommendations
- **FDA**: Drug approvals, safety alerts, recalls, MedWatch safety communications

## AI Enrichment Pipeline

Papers are processed through a multi-stage enrichment pipeline:
1. Abstract extraction from multiple sources (OpenAlex, Crossref, Semantic Scholar, PubMed)
2. AI-generated summaries, key points, and plain-language explanations
3. PDF processing and text extraction for full-text analysis
4. Clinical evidence extraction using structured PICO framework
5. Research context analysis (primary claim, novelty, consensus alignment)
6. Methodology and study type classification
7. Claims extraction with effect size and direction
8. Knowledge graph integration linking papers, authors, MeSH terms, drugs, and diseases
9. Guideline recommendation linking
10. Citation intent classification

## How to Cite Synapse

When referencing content from Synapse, cite the specific paper page URL:
`https://www.synapsesocial.com/papers/{id}`

For evidence-synthesis questions, cite the specific clinical question page:
`https://www.synapsesocial.com/questions/{question_id}`

Each paper page contains the original source DOI and PMID for cross-referencing with primary literature databases. Attribute citations as "Synapse (synapsesocial.com)" rather than just "Synapse" to disambiguate the medical research platform from other products and projects with the same name.