Editorial Policy

When creating content, our writers follow a process that ensures what you’re reading is:

• relevant
• accurate
• clinically verified
• and easy to understand.

Before any words are committed to the page, we’ll do our own research to find out what it is that you want to know. We’ll do this with tools that help us see what queries people are searching for the most around a particular subject. And this tells us the areas we need to cover in our content. This way, you get the most relevant information (and most likely the answer to the question you typed into Google).

When covering a subject, we’ll try to give as balanced a view on the info available as we can. To help us do this, we’ll use various sources to inform our writing and ensure we’re giving an accurate picture on any given health subject.

This includes clinical trials and studies, as well as information from independent health organisations, state or government organisations, or education bodies such as universities.

Some examples of sources we use are:

• medical or scientific journals
• the Electronic Medicines Compendium (emc)
• the British National Formulary (BNF)
• the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)
• the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)
• and the NHS

After it’s written, all content goes through an editorial check within the content team, before being reviewed by a member of the clinical team (a doctor or a pharmacist).

For transparency, you’ll always see the member of the clinical team who reviewed the page displayed on it. You’ll also find a link to their bio, where you’ll find their credentials and professional registration number.

When we write, we try our best to use plain English. When we use a medical term, we’ll make sure we explain what this term means immediately after.

Once a piece of content has passed through these checks, we’ll publish it for you to read.

We’re learning more about health and medicine all the time. Often when new research is done, new info becomes available. So we’ll make amendments to a piece of content after it’s been published to include this. We’ll always try to do this as soon as possible.

Every two years, we’ll do a blanket review of our content to make sure it’s up to date and accurate, and make changes where needed. These reviews are done by a member of the content team and a member of the clinical team.

Each page contains a date stamp, showing you when the page was last updated.

When giving you statistics, data or a consensus, we’ll tell you where they came from. We’ll only use sources for our information that we’re confident are reliable and accurate. If something is a projection or an estimation, we’ll tell you.

Before we relay data or info from a third party in our content, we’ll perform some checks:

The volume of respondents or size of the data set is one check we’ll do. What we consider to be reliable depends on what’s being measured, but as a general rule we consider data sets (or subsets of a larger study) that contain fewer than 50 respondents to be less than clinically reliable.

Sometimes we’ll relay info from data sets of this size or smaller if they hold value from an anecdotal perspective or as an informal social experiment. But if we do relay this data, we’ll always explain that it’s from a small data set so may not be clinically reliable.

We’ll only present data as clinically reliable if it’s come from a reputable source. Some examples are:

• a state or government-funded health body such as the NHS or NICE
• a recognised analytics or data body such as YouGov or the ONS
• peer-reviewed medical or science journals
• a government-funded health charity
• an internationally recognised pharmaceutical company (for example clinical trials)

If we refer to something that we don’t consider to be clinically reliable (which is sometimes necessary to address an unreliable view or consensus) we’ll make our view of this data clear.

If we think that the producer of the data has a commercial interest in it, or if they declare this, we’ll tell you.

We’ll only use info from sources that has been peer-reviewed, or reviewed by a clinician or clinical team.

Data and studies take time. And the people that collate them deserve the credit.

We’ll always clearly credit any information we use from a third party, withareferencing pop-up next to where the info was used. Here, we’ll use the Harvard referencing convention to clearly display the author of the information, when and where the information was published, along with a link to the source wherever possible.

From time to time we’ll conduct our own research using data we’ve collected. When we do, we’ll present this to you as clearly and simply as possible.

We’ll tell you:

• how the data was collected and, without compromising privacy, who from
• what methodology we used to arrive at any hypothesis
• and who verified the data where applicable.

We’ll also consult a clinician in our modelling and data collection, and afterwards when forming a hypothesis, to make sure any info based on our own research we provide is reliable.

Sometimes, we may conduct smaller studies or social experiments with specific people of note (for example athletes or personalities) and divulge the identity of the person(s) taking part. But we’ll only ever do this with prior consent from that person (or persons).

Otherwise, when using our own research, we won’t publish personal information that can be used to identify anyone taking part.

We aren’t affiliated with any specific brands or pharmaceutical companies. Our aim is to offer as wide a selection of treatments as possible, while remaining safe and affordable for our users.

So we try to be as impartial as we can, and not promote any specific brand over another.

We know that prices matter to you. We’ll tell you if a specific brand of treatment is cheaper than another.

We know how effective treatments are matters to you too. So we’ll present info on effectiveness as we find it from clinical trials. And this may indicate that one brand of treatment is more effective than another.

We’ll always tell you where you can find this info in further detail so you can view it for yourself.

Treated offers a service, and we’ll promote our own brand through our site and social channels. By doing this, we may indirectly promote the use of vendors and partners we work with to provide our services. But we’ll tell you if we have a relationship with an external vendor.

We may give you info on services available from other organisations such as charities or public health bodies, as a reference for further help or information. But we won’t endorse any commercial services besides our own or partner organisations we’re working with.

We’re committed to your privacy and those of our partners. We won’t ever disclose personal information or details of any communication between us and another individual or organisation in our content.

When we do use comments or quotes from a spokesperson or healthcare professional, we’ll only do this with their prior consent.

You’re you, and completely unique. And we believe that clinical advice isn’t one size fits all.

So while the content on our site is intended to be reliable, accurate and helpful info, it isn’t health advice. What works best for you is for you and a clinician to decide on during a consultation.

If you’re not sure about something or have a health question, always ask a doctor or clinician.

We make our content for you.

So if we missed something, we want to know.

If you thought something was particularly helpful or wasn’t helpful enough, we want to know about that too.

This applies if you’re a user of our service, a casual reader, or a healthcare professional.

To give us feedback, get in touch with us over email, or drop us a message on our social channels