How it works
How our questions are written & reviewed
An algorithm is only as good as the questions beneath it — so content comes first. Every item is written by a clinician, verified by a second, traced to the standard references, and re-examined as residents answer it. This is that process, in full — nothing hidden.
In one line: written by an ophthalmologist, verified by a second, sourced to the BCSC and Kanski, and corrected the moment a reader flags a flaw.
The pipeline, end to end. Each stage is explained below.
Authored by clinicians — never crowdsourced
Every question is written by an ophthalmology-trained author — the stem, the options, and the explanation of why each distractor is wrong. They follow the one-best-answer item-writing standards used for medical licensing exams, so a question tests clinical reasoning — not recall trivia or test-taking tricks.
Verified by a second clinician
No question goes live on one person's judgment. A second clinician re-checks the stem, the keyed answer, and the explanation — confirming the medicine is correct, current, and unambiguous, and that exactly one option is defensibly best. Anything contestable is revised or cut before it reaches you.
Traced to the standard references
Every clinical claim is anchored to an authoritative source — so an answer is defensible, not merely plausible. Each question is written and cross-checked against:
AAO Basic and Clinical Science Course (BCSC)
Ophthalmology's official curriculum. Every question maps to a BCSC section (2023–2024 edition), so coverage mirrors the syllabus your exam is drawn from.
Kanski's Clinical Ophthalmology
Cross-referenced for signs, imaging, and management — so the reasoning holds against more than one authoritative text.
Primary literature & landmark trials
Where a fact rests on evidence — drug dosing, trial thresholds, first-line management — it is traced to the source trial or guideline, not to memory.
Calibrated on real performance
Publishing isn't the end. As residents answer, each question's difficulty is calibrated on how the cohort actually performs — not the author's guess. That real-world signal feeds your readiness index and flags any item that behaves oddly — too easy, too hard, or ambiguous — for another review.
Corrected in the open
Flag any question in a single tap. Reports go straight to the clinical team, who triage, fix, clarify, or retire the item — and the correction reaches everyone at once. A question bank that self-corrects is the entire point of working in the open.
Where AI fits — and where it doesn't
Tooling can help authors draft faster and catch typos or formatting slips. But a clinician is accountable for every published question — the medicine, the keyed answer, and the explanation are written and reviewed by humans. Nothing is auto-published from a model.
Our commitment: quality is a process, not a badge. We watch how every question behaves in the cohort, revise the ones that don't hold up, and would sooner retire a weak item than defend it. Find one that's wrong — and it's fixed for everyone.
Content is the foundation. Two engines sit on top of it: adaptive spaced repetition (what to study, when) and the readiness index (how ready you are). See all three on the how-it-works overview.
The standards behind it
Our writing and review follow the same item-writing standards used to build medical licensing exams:
- Constructing Written Test Questions for the Basic and Clinical Sciences
Case, S. M., & Swanson, D. B. (2002) — National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) — the standard item-writing manual.
- Constructing Written Test Questions for the Basic and Clinical Sciences (4th ed.)
Paniagua, M. A., & Swygert, K. A. (Eds.) (2016) — NBME — updated guidance on one-best-answer MCQs and avoiding technical flaws.
- A review of multiple-choice item-writing guidelines for classroom assessment
Haladyna, T. M., Downing, S. M., & Rodriguez, M. C. (2002) — Applied Measurement in Education — evidence base for MCQ writing rules.
- Basic and Clinical Science Course (BCSC)
American Academy of Ophthalmology — The official AAO curriculum our questions are mapped to.