Safety & Accuracy

Purpose and limits

FOAM Cortex is a clinical reference and education tool. It does not provide medical advice, replace independent clinical judgment, or guarantee that an answer is accurate or complete. Clinicians remain responsible for checking the cited source material and applying it to the patient and local standard of care.

Source-grounded answers

Before generating an answer, FOAM Cortex retrieves relevant excerpts from enabled, indexed sources. Factual claims come only from the provided excerpts, with citations placed next to the claims they support. Outside knowledge, unstated assumptions, and unauthorized sources are excluded.

A citation supports only what its source establishes, including the population, intervention, outcome, timeframe, and limitations. Information is not ready for patient care until the cited source has been reviewed.

Missing, incomplete, or conflicting evidence

When the retrieved material does not support an answer, FOAM Cortex returns an insufficient-source response instead of an answer. It does not guess, fill gaps from memory, or provide unsupported recommendations.

When sources conflict or are incomplete, the response describes the limitation plainly instead of manufacturing consensus.

Clinical fidelity checks

Recommendations preserve every source-supported population, indication, dose or threshold, timing, contraindication, exception, and reassessment criterion needed to interpret them safely. Numerical outcomes retain the source population, timeframe, and uncertainty rather than being generalized to a different clinical context.

Protected health information

FOAM Cortex is not intended for protected health information (PHI). Query screening blocks prompts that match supported PHI patterns and asks the user to remove the detected identifiers. Screening reduces risk but cannot guarantee that every identifier will be detected. Submitting PHI is prohibited.

Review and feedback

This document is versioned and reviewed when the described behavior changes. Users can report an unsupported claim, citation problem, or other concern through the FOAM Cortex feedback page.