Effective date: July 23, 2007
At Wellocities, our mission is to engage and empower Canadians to manage their own health or that of a loved one. We want you to feel confident that you can trust the health information you find here. The purpose of this policy is to explain the ways we ensure our site is accurate and trustworthy. It’s also important that you can easily tell the difference between our editorial content, which is subject to review, and our community content and advertisements, which are not.
We provide medical information, not medical advice. Everyone’s health is different. Your health changes over time, and you have a unique health history — which means your doctor and health care team are the only ones who can provide you with specific advice about your health decisions. It’s our goal to give you balanced information from the best of traditional medicine along with alternative therapies, all in an easy to understand format.
We’ll never be a substitute for your doctor, so please consult with your doctor before acting on any information that you find on our site or anywhere else on the Internet.
We want to help you by providing health information that’s both meaningful and easy to use. Your health isn’t about medical terms, short-forms or statistics — it’s about you.
Our site contains editorial content, community contributed content, links to other websites, and advertisements. In order to distinguish among these types of content, we provide you with visual cues. It is important to be aware of these cues and to understand how we treat different kinds of content so that you can properly assess the information provided.
Editorial Content
The core of our site is editorial content. This includes articles, video files, audio files, graphics, photographs, calculators, tracking and assessment tools that are reviewed and published on the site at the direction of our Editorial and Content teams.
There are 2 types of editorial content:
1. Wellocities content, which we create or commission
2. Licensed content, which is developed by leading health publishers and trusted names in online health care.
The sources of editorial content are clearly marked. For example, Wellocities content is marked “Provided by Wellocities” and licensed content is marked “Provided by Healthwise” or other content providers as appropriate. Editorial content is selected by our experienced team of physicians, content programmers and editors and is subject to the editorial and medical review process described below.
Community Content
Community content (material generated by visitors) appears within the Community area. This section is specially colour coded. Community content may also appear in other areas of the site. You will be alerted to community content in this case by the change in colour, as well as other cues. Users of Wellocities can rate doctors, hospitals and medical treatments; post questions, answers and comments within our forums and Web logs (blogs); create their own blogs; and connect with others. We believe that people have important information to share based on their personal experiences and points of view. Because this content is, by nature, personal and constantly changing, it is not subject to medical review. Since everyone’s health situation is unique, we urge you to use caution when reading this information. Please see our Posting guidelines for more information.
Linked sites
Sometimes we provide links to content published elsewhere on the Web as a convenience to you or to provide additional information. A link to another site does not imply approval or endorsement of the Website, its owners, products or any other material presented. A link is not subject to the review processes we apply to Wellocities and licensed content.
Advertising
Wellocities uses advertising to generate revenue. Our editorial content will not be influenced by our advertising policies. We believe it is important that you can easily distinguish between editorial content and advertising. All advertising, promotions and sponsorships for which we receive compensation are clearly labeled. Please see our Advertising policy for more information.
Wellocities also abides by the editorial and medical review policies described below.
Wellocities content is produced, selected and reviewed by experienced health writers and editors. Wellocities content that is related to a condition or treatment is subject to medical review by a health care professional with appropriate credentials (most often licensed physicians or other credentialed health professional) and experience in the relevant field. These health care professionals review Wellocities content and health assessment tools for medical accuracy, safety, fairness and sourcing.
With advancing medical research, content related to treatments and conditions is reviewed regularly. In some cases, where determined necessary by our medical staff, content is reviewed more often for continued accuracy and relevance.
Licensed Content: Health and medical content that we license from our partners, is prepared and reviewed under each partner’s policies.
Exceptions
The review process we describe above is limited to editorial content. As noted, we do not subject community content, advertisements or links to other sites to these standards. Finally, given the importance of publishing medical news in a timely manner, new articles may not be subject to medical review. All news articles are labeled “News” either in the headline or on the page label.
Updates to this policy
We will review our policy frequently and may revise it periodically. If we make changes to this policy, we will post the updated version. This policy’s effective date will be identified at the top of the page.
Please let us know how we are doing. Write to us anytime at policy@Wellocities.com