Sources & Data
PillsCard is a reference encyclopedia — every drug, dosage, warning, and interaction traces back to the sources listed below. We prefer primary regulatory data (authorized drug labels) over secondary summaries. When secondary sources are needed, we use peer-reviewed and guideline-body literature.
Tier 1 — Regulatory authorities
Tier 2 — Clinical guidelines & WHO
Tier 3 — Peer-reviewed literature & databases
Methodology
Drug records are imported from regulator APIs (EMA, openFDA) or scraped from official registries with ethical rate-limiting (respecting robots.txt and announced crawl policies). Imports run on a 7-day cycle; each record carries a source URL and fetch timestamp.
Primary label text — indications, dosing, contraindications, warnings, drug interactions — is stored verbatim. We do not paraphrase or abridge regulatory text. Our display layer may add formatting and translation but never alters factual content.
Interaction severity classifications combine ONCHigh (high-priority list), SemMedDB (literature-mined), DDInter (curated database), and openFDA label sections. When sources disagree, the more severe classification is shown with all source labels visible.
Clinical articles written by our editorial team cite Tier 1–2 sources inline. Every citation is a clickable link to the primary source; we do not cite sources that require paywall or proprietary access for the user to verify.
What we cannot guarantee
Regulatory APIs occasionally lag behind individual national label updates. We publish the fetch date on each drug page — if a regulator issues a new warning today, PillsCard will reflect it within 7 days (sooner for critical safety updates).
Machine translations (handled by Claude AI) are reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy but may contain nuances best resolved against the original English source, which is always linked.
Drug-drug interaction databases are not infallible — they represent published evidence, not clinical certainty. Always consult a pharmacist or physician before combining medications.