How We Research Medicine Information

Medicine information is only worth publishing if it is true, current and honestly framed. This page describes the standard every ingredient page, condition page and article on Pharmacy Victoria is written against, so you can judge our content by the same rules we use to write it.

Our source hierarchy

When sources disagree, the higher tier wins:

  1. Medicine regulators and official prescribing information: the US FDA, the European Medicines Agency, national regulators, and the approved product labels they publish.
  2. Peer-reviewed evidence: randomised trials, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, preferred in that order, accessed through PubMed Central and journal publishers.
  3. Public health bodies: the WHO and national health services, for guidance and population-level facts.
  4. Reputable specialist media and patient organisations, used for context and reported experience, never as the sole basis for a clinical claim.

We do not cite other online pharmacies, and we do not use marketing material from manufacturers as evidence.

Every important claim needs a source

Any claim a reader might act on, an effect size, a safety warning, an approval status, a price-level fact, must trace to a source in the hierarchy above. Articles carry a visible References section listing those sources with their real, uncloaked links. Where the honest answer is "the evidence is mixed" or "this is contested", we say exactly that rather than picking the tidier story; several of our guides exist precisely to lay out both sides of an unresolved question.

No unsupported figures

Numbers are where sloppy health content does the most damage. We do not publish statistics we cannot trace to a primary source, and we round honestly rather than manufacturing precision. If a figure is disputed, we present the range and say who claims what.

Every external reference is checked as live before an article ships, and the checks are re-run when content is updated. Dead links get replaced, not left to rot.

How we handle brands and generics

Brand names are used to help you recognise a medicine, not to rank products. What we actually list is the branded-generic alternative: a recognised brand in its own right, with the same active ingredient as the big-name original by legal standard. The full explanation of what bioequivalence guarantees, and its genuine limits, is in our generics guide.

Safety facts are not optional

Every high-risk medicine page carries its most important safety fact: boxed warnings, mandatory monitoring, interaction rules, pregnancy warnings. A page that mentions a medicine's benefits but hides its principal risk would be marketing, not information, and it would not pass our review.

What we do not publish

We do not publish dosing instructions for self-treatment, workarounds for prescription requirements, or content that presents an off-label use as an invitation rather than information. Off-label uses we cover are clearly labelled as such, with the state of the evidence stated plainly.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we fix the page, not the record. Corrections reported through the contact page are checked against sources and applied with priority. Articles show their last-updated date.

The standard, in one sentence

Written for people, checked against sources, honest about uncertainty, and never a substitute for advice from a doctor or pharmacist who knows your history.