Source policy

Principle

Software repositories supply code; they are never medical authorities. Neither is artificial intelligence. Every public medical statement should be traceable to a source from the list below and recorded as a reference.

Source tiers

Tier 1: WHO, EMA, FDA, HAS, NICE, CDC, ECDC; official product information; recognised international terminology standards such as ICD-11, SNOMED CT, ATC, RxNorm, LOINC and Terminologia Anatomica. These may be the sole basis of a claim.

Tier 2: recognised medical society guidelines (for example ESC, AHA/ACC, KDIGO), systematic reviews and peer-reviewed primary papers, cited individually.

Tier 3: major academic textbooks, used as supporting references with edition stated.

Tier 4: everything else, including websites, open datasets and AI output. These are never an authority; they can only be a lead that must be confirmed against tiers 1 to 3.

What “draft” and “source-checked” mean

Much of the reference content on this site (anatomy, cranial nerves, terminology, laboratory values, ECG articles, calculators, cases) was drafted with the help of AI from standard textbook knowledge. A page with no verification record is a draft: it is labelled “Draft — not yet medically reviewed” and is not indexed by search engines.

A page is “source-checked” when a verification record exists for it: its data was cross-checked against published sources (official guidelines and societies, WHO, NIH/NCBI/MedlinePlus, peer-reviewed papers, standard references; never Wikipedia, blogs or AI) on the date shown, using an automated, AI-assisted process. A record must list at least two sources from two different publishers, and the sources consulted are shown on the page. Source-checked pages may be indexed by search engines. It is not medical review: no licensed clinician reviewed these pages, and the checks can miss errors or become outdated.

A draft or source-checked page has not been checked line by line by a qualified clinician. The references listed under each article are supporting reading, not proof of each sentence. Treat both as study aids and confirm them against your course material and current guidelines.

AI never marks content as medically reviewed. Only a human reviewer, working through our verification pipeline (source check, medical review, approval), can publish an item as reviewed, and publication records the reviewer and the date.

How references are handled

We cite and summarise; we do not copy text we have no right to republish. We never invent identifiers: if a DOI or PMID is not certain, it is left out. Drug and guideline data state their jurisdiction, because a US label is not a French or Moroccan one.

Where practice or reference values differ between countries, laboratories or methods, the text says so.

Reporting a mistake

Every reference page has a “Report incorrect information” button. Reports never change content automatically: an editor reviews each one, and an accepted report on published content sends it back for review.

Educational use only

Nothing here is for diagnosis or treatment decisions. See the terms of use.