Most medical students have a revision plan. It usually looks like this: a spreadsheet with topics listed by week, colour-coded, shared with study partners, abandoned by week 3. The plan fails because it was built from a syllabus, not from your performance. It allocates equal time to every topic regardless of what you already know and what you do not. It does not adapt when you fall behind. And it has no mechanism to tell you whether you are actually ready for the exam or just busy.
The iatroX AI study planner solves this. It generates a personalised daily revision schedule from three inputs: your exam, your exam date, and your available daily study time. Every day after that, the planner tells you exactly what to do — which topics to study, how many questions to do, when to take a mock, and whether you are on track.
The Three-Phase Structure
The study planner divides your preparation into three phases, each with a different cognitive goal.
Phase 1 — Foundation (building breadth). The first phase covers the full curriculum systematically. Daily tasks include structured topic clusters (3-5 related topics per session to build conceptual connections) and adaptive questions across all exam domains. The goal is curriculum coverage — ensuring you have encountered every major topic at least once before moving to targeted practice. The planner tracks coverage percentage and flags domains you have not yet touched. For a UKMLA candidate, this means working through all 18 body systems and 212 clinical presentations. For a PLAB 1 candidate, it means covering the full MLA Content Map with emphasis on the UK-specific management pathways your international training may not have covered. The foundation phase typically takes 30-40% of your total preparation time — enough to build breadth without getting stuck in broad-but-shallow revision forever.
Phase 2 — Application (targeting weak areas). Once foundational coverage exceeds a threshold, the planner shifts to targeted revision. Daily tasks concentrate on your weakest domains — identified from your Q-bank performance data across all practice sessions. If your cardiovascular proficiency is 85% but your endocrinology is 52%, the planner allocates more endocrine questions and fewer cardiovascular ones. This is where the adaptive engine and the study planner work together: the engine identifies your gaps, the planner schedules the work to close them.
Phase 3 — Performance (exam simulation). In the final phase, the planner introduces mock exams at increasing frequency alongside continued adaptive practice. The focus shifts from knowledge building to exam readiness — timed conditions, mixed-topic sessions, and mock performance tracking. The readiness score updates after each mock, providing a data-driven assessment of whether you are on track for your target exam date.
How Daily Tasks Are Generated
Each daily task set is generated from four inputs.
Topic clustering. Rather than serving random questions from random topics, the planner clusters related topics within each session — cardiovascular pharmacology alongside cardiovascular pathology, for example. This produces stronger knowledge connections than random interleaving and mirrors how clinical knowledge is organised in practice.
Performance data. Your accuracy, speed, and confidence across every exam domain — updated in real time from every Q-bank session and mock exam. Topics where your performance is weakest receive more daily allocation. Topics where your performance is strong receive less — freeing time for the areas that need it. The system does not just track whether you got a question right or wrong — it tracks how quickly you answered (indicating confidence vs guessing), whether your accuracy in that topic is improving or declining over time, and how recently you last practised the topic (to determine spacing intervals).
Spacing intervals. The planner uses spacing intervals informed by Cepeda et al. (2008) — the most comprehensive meta-analysis of spacing effects in learning, covering over 250 studies. Topics you studied yesterday are not repeated today. Topics you studied last week resurface today at an interval calibrated to maximise long-term retention. The spacing algorithm ensures that every topic resurfaces at the optimal moment — not too soon (wasting time on content still fresh), not too late (allowing the memory to decay below retrieval threshold). The practical effect: topics you initially found difficult reappear frequently in the first two weeks, then at increasing intervals as your accuracy improves — 2 days, then 5 days, then 12 days, then 25 days. Topics you mastered quickly appear less frequently but still resurface periodically to prevent silent decay.
Enforced interleaving. Each daily session includes 3-5 different topics — not a single topic block. Interleaved practice (mixing topics within a session) produces better long-term retention and transfer than blocked practice (studying one topic at a time), even though blocked practice feels easier in the moment (Rohrer and Taylor, 2007). The planner enforces this automatically — you do not need to manually diversify your sessions. A typical session might include two cardiovascular questions, one psychiatric question, one endocrine question, and one respiratory question — training the rapid topic-switching that real exams demand.
The Readiness Score
The readiness score is the planner's answer to the question every candidate asks: "Am I ready?"
It is a composite metric computed from curriculum coverage (what percentage of exam topics you have practised), weighted accuracy (how well you perform across topics, weighted by exam importance), mock exam trends (whether your mock scores are improving, stable, or declining), and time remaining (how many study days remain before your exam date).
The score maps to five tiers: significant gaps remain, building momentum, solid foundation, strong position, and exam ready. The planner updates the score daily — so you can track your trajectory and make informed decisions about whether to book your exam sitting, defer, or intensify preparation.
What a Typical Day Looks Like
You open iatroX. The study planner shows today's tasks. A typical day in the application phase might look like this:
Task 1: 15 adaptive questions on endocrinology (your weakest domain — the planner identified this from your Q-bank data). Estimated time: 15 minutes. Task 2: 10 adaptive questions on cardiovascular (strong domain — maintenance practice, not intensive drilling). Estimated time: 8 minutes. Task 3: 5 spaced repetition questions on neurology (topics you studied 6 days ago that are now due for review). Estimated time: 5 minutes. Total: 30 questions, approximately 28 minutes.
You complete the tasks. The planner updates your proficiency data, adjusts tomorrow's tasks based on today's performance, and updates your readiness score. If you got 12/15 endocrinology questions correct (up from 8/15 last week), tomorrow's endocrine allocation might decrease slightly and the planner might introduce a new weak topic. If you got 3/5 neurology spaced repetition questions wrong, those topics re-enter the spacing queue at a shorter interval.
You did not need to decide which topics to study, how many questions to do, or whether to review old topics or learn new ones. The planner decided for you — based on your data, not your feelings about what you "probably need to revise."
Why Spreadsheet Plans Fail
The traditional revision plan — a spreadsheet allocating topics to weeks — fails for three specific reasons that the AI study planner addresses.
Spreadsheets do not adapt. If you fall behind by a week (illness, clinical commitments, life), the spreadsheet does not reschedule. You either skip the missed topics (creating gaps) or try to catch up (creating an unsustainable workload). The AI study planner reschedules automatically — redistributing missed content across remaining study days without overwhelming any single day.
Spreadsheets allocate equally. A spreadsheet gives cardiovascular the same time as ophthalmology, regardless of whether you need 20 hours on cardiovascular and 2 hours on ophthalmology (or vice versa). The AI study planner allocates based on your performance data — weak areas get more time, strong areas get less. This produces more efficient use of limited study time.
Spreadsheets cannot tell you when you are ready. A completed spreadsheet tells you that you have studied everything. It does not tell you whether you have studied everything well enough. The readiness score — computed from coverage, accuracy, and mock trends — provides the answer that a spreadsheet cannot. This is the difference between "I have finished my revision plan" (meaningless) and "my readiness score is Tier 4 with an improving trajectory" (actionable).
Who Is the Study Planner For?
The study planner supports every candidate type. Medical students preparing for UKMLA with 6-12 months of preparation time — the planner builds a gradual, sustainable schedule. IMGs preparing for PLAB 1 with 3 months and limited daily study time — the planner optimises 30-minute daily sessions for maximum impact. GP trainees preparing for the MRCGP AKT while working full clinical days — the planner fits revision into the time you actually have, not the time a textbook assumes you have. Specialist trainees preparing for diploma exams alongside clinical work — the planner handles the scheduling so your limited study time addresses the right topics.
The common thread: every candidate has limited time and unlimited curriculum. The study planner's job is to ensure the limited time is spent on the topics that will most improve your exam performance — not the topics that feel most comfortable or familiar.
Setup
The setup flow takes 60 seconds. Pick your exam (any of the 29 supported specifications). Set your exam date. Choose your available daily study time (as low as 30 minutes — the planner optimises within whatever time you have). The planner generates your first week of daily tasks immediately.
Available for all exams across UK, US, Canada, and Australia. The study planner is a premium feature included in the iatroX subscription.
Set up your plan at iatrox.com/study-plan.