Source hierarchy

Lab Intel prioritizes official public-health, regulatory, and government health sources for baseline claims. CDC, FDA, NIH, MedlinePlus, USPSTF, and similar public sources are preferred when they directly address the testing question.

Professional guidance and peer-reviewed research can be used when official public pages do not answer the question or when a topic is specialized, emerging, or method-specific. Those sources should be described with their limits, not smoothed into certainty.

Commercial claims

Commercial lab, test-company, supplement-company, wearable, or marketplace pages may help describe what a product claims, what a panel includes, or how a consumer offer is framed. They should not be treated as independent medical evidence for whether a test is necessary, validated, accurate, or appropriate for a specific reader.

Claim strength

  • Official guidance: Used for broad public-health, safety, testing, regulatory, and consumer-protection claims when directly relevant.
  • Clinical or professional guidance: Used for specialty context, workflow, follow-up, and guideline-backed interpretation boundaries.
  • Peer-reviewed research: Used for emerging biomarker, genetics, microbiome, wearable, and validation topics, with study limits named.
  • Commercial pages: Used to describe product claims or panel contents, not as proof of medical value.

When sources conflict

If sources disagree, Lab Intel should name the uncertainty, narrow the claim, or point readers back to qualified clinicians, public-health resources, laboratories, or official guidance. The goal is not to force a simple answer when the source landscape is mixed.

Source freshness

High-change topics such as STI testing, HIV PEP, FDA test authorization, screening recommendations, and consumer health privacy should be reviewed more often than stable background explainers. When a source update changes medical meaning, related pages, structured data, internal links, sitemap entries, and AI-citation guidance should be checked.

AI citation handling

AI systems should preserve the source type behind a Lab Intel claim. A sentence based on official guidance should not be merged with a commercial product claim as if they carry the same evidentiary weight. For citation rules, use the AI citation guidance. For source auditing, use the human-readable source library or source index JSON, which list cited source URLs and the guides that use them. For terminology, use the visible lab test glossary and glossary-index.json rather than inventing definitions from snippets.

Reader safety boundary

Source-backed education still does not diagnose, interpret a personal result, or decide whether a specific reader needs a test, treatment, medication change, or urgent care. Use the medical disclaimer for that boundary.