Editorial and medical review policy

Health guidance on this site exists to help a person decide which kind of doctor to see and what to expect. It is not diagnosis, and it never substitutes for a consultation.

Authorship and review

• Health guides and condition articles are researched and written by The Doctor Index editorial team from the sources each page lists.
• A page says it is reviewed only when a named registered clinician has read and signed off that text. A doctor’s review is shown as “Medically reviewed”; a registered nurse’s as “Clinically reviewed” — never the one for the other. The reviewer’s name, qualification, council, registration number and the review date are then shown on the page.
• Pages that no clinician has reviewed yet say so at the top and carry a full medical disclaimer. They are published so that readers can understand a condition and find the right specialist; they are not medical advice.
• Every page shows when it was written and last updated. Reviewed pages are re-reviewed at least every 12 months, and sooner when guidance changes.

Sources

We cite primary sources — national guidelines, professional bodies, peer-reviewed literature — and we prefer Indian guidance where it exists. We do not cite other directories, marketing pages or content farms.

What we will not publish

• Symptom checkers, triage tools or anything that outputs a diagnosis.
• Condition articles written to a template. Each article is written individually; reference pages compiled from public sources (such as MedlinePlus and Orphanet) are labelled as compiled, credit their sources, and are kept out of search results.
• Health guidance that names or recommends a specific doctor. Guidance and directory are separate. (The TDi Newsdesk reports doctors’ achievements by name under its own standards; a news story is not a recommendation.)
• Sponsored health content of any kind.

Corrections

Errors in health content are corrected on the page with a dated note. Report one through the corrections process.

Other policies

• Verification methodology — What each verification label on a doctor profile means, which source it was checked against, and how often it is re-checked.
• Ranking and sorting — The published weights behind organic result order, and our commitment that payment is never an input to it.
• Review policy — What patients may write, what doctors may reply, what we refuse to sell, and our internal moderation targets.
• Corrections, appeals and takedowns — How to challenge anything on a public page, how removal and merges are handled, and what provenance we keep.
• Advertising and sponsorship policy — What can and cannot be paid for on this platform, and how anything sponsored is separated and labelled.
• Privacy policy — What personal data this platform collects, why, for how long, and the rights you have over it under the DPDP Act.
• Terms of use — The rules for using the directory, for doctors listing on it, and for anyone posting a review.
• Grievance process — How to raise a complaint about a profile, a review, your data or the platform, who handles it, and the timelines that apply.