Methodology
Source-cited, not medically reviewed
HealthScorer publishes calculators and reference articles. We do not employ medical reviewers, and we do not present our content as clinically reviewed. Instead, every page is anchored to primary sources: peer-reviewed publications, published clinical guidelines, and government health bodies (NHS, NICE, WHO, CDC, NIH, FDA, MHRA, BfArM, ANSM, AEMPS, AIFA, Polish Medycyna Praktyczna, etc.).
This is a deliberate choice. A clinician's signature is one form of authority signal; a dense, traceable, externally verifiable citation chain is another. The latter scales, the former does not. Both have a place, and we are clear about which one we offer.
What every calculator page contains
- The exact formula or scoring rule with a written explanation
- The threshold table or interpretation grid
- An "intended use / not medical advice" framing on every page
- A minimum of two cited primary sources, each linked with publisher and retrieval date
- A "Sources verified" date, refreshed whenever we re-check the calculation against its references
How we choose what to publish
- The instrument has a validated, peer-reviewed origin (or is in the public domain, like the PHQ-9 or GAD-7)
- The calculation is unambiguous — same inputs always yield the same output
- The result is informative without being prescriptive
- We can explain the limits of the calculation honestly
Calculations we will not publish
Some calculations cross from "informative reference" into "clinical decision support." We do not publish those, regardless of demand:
- Prescription-drug dose calculators
- Pediatric weight-based dosing for medications
- Anticoagulation dosing (warfarin, INR-driven)
- Insulin dose, chemotherapy dose
- Drug-drug interaction screeners
If you need any of those, see your prescriber or a hospital pharmacist.
Update cadence
We re-verify each calculator at least annually against its primary sources, and immediately when an authoritative guideline is updated. The "Sources verified" timestamp on each calculator page reflects the most recent re-check.
AI in our workflow
Drafting, formatting, and translation are AI-assisted. Every claim is then traced back to a primary source by a human editor before publication. We do not publish AI-generated medical claims that are not anchored to a verifiable, cited reference.