How we use AI

What AI does here

AI helps us draft plain-language explanations from authoritative sources, organize information around the moment a reader is in, suggest related pages, and run automated checks for problems like unsupported claims or missing context. It helps us cover more ground, more clearly, than a small team could alone.

Where AI is not trusted to decide

AI does not get the final say on anything that affects your safety. Every medical claim must trace to an authoritative public source — such as the National Cancer Institute — and pages on higher-risk topics are held for additional review rather than published automatically. We do not use AI to diagnose, to recommend treatment for an individual, or to interpret your personal results.

Our source requirement

If a fact isn’t supported by a cited source, it doesn’t belong on the page. You can see the sources behind each page, and we encourage you to read the originals. See our sources, and editorial process for the full picture.

We also publish the measurements rather than only the promise: how checkable our sourcing actually is gives the count of pages citing a specific document you can open and compare, against the count that name only the publisher — which is currently the larger problem of the two, and ours rather than yours.

Why most pages are not physician-reviewed

We label pages honestly. Most pages are written from authoritative sources and checked — but they have not been individually reviewed by a physician, and we do not claim they have. When a page carries a “medically reviewed” label, it means a named, credentialed reviewer checked it on the date shown. We will never invent a reviewer or a credential. Read more about our labels on how we review content.

The Ask AI Safety Model

Our “Ask Cancer Explained” retrieval system adheres strictly to six safety invariants:

• Retrieval-Constrained: Answers only from reviewed NCI and Cancer Explained content. Never invents resources or citations.
• Refuses Diagnosis: Explicitly declines individual diagnosis and treatment selection requests.
• Source Attribution: Displays exact source pages, review dates, and geographic applicability.
• Urgent Escalation: Detects emergency risk language (e.g. neutropenic fever) and escalates immediately to 1-800-4-CANCER or emergency care.
• Privacy Protection: Never stores personal health narratives or identifying data by default.
• Community Reporting: Includes a visible report-answer trigger on generated summaries.

How we handle what you type

Our interactive tools are built to minimize data. Please do not enter your name, medical record numbers, date of birth, address, or other identifying medical information. The symptom checker, screening checklist, and appointment and question builders run entirely in your browser and do not send what you enter to a server. The “Ask” tool transmits your typed question to generate an answer but is designed not to store the question text — it keeps only anonymous, non-identifying usage information. We do not claim HIPAA compliance, and these tools are not for transmitting a full medical record. See our privacy policy.

Limitations

AI can make mistakes, and no automated system catches everything. Our content is general education, not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for your care team, who know your situation. Pages here are not signed off by a clinician before they publish. That is not an oversight we are quietly working around: we restate published guidance and cite it, so the authority belongs to the source rather than to us, and every page names where its claims come from — you can verify us instead of trusting us. Where a volunteer clinician has reviewed a page, their name and credentials appear on it; where no name appears, no clinician has checked it. We are glad to have reviewers and are recruiting them, and we do not hold pages back waiting for one. Use this site to understand your situation and to ask better questions of the people treating you. If something on a page seems wrong, unclear, or unsafe, please tell us — see corrections and error reports or email corrections@cancerexplained.org.

Why transparency matters

AI lets a small nonprofit turn dense public health information into clear, free plain-language education. Being open about that — and about our limits — is how we try to earn trust rather than assert it.