Cited medical answers you can check

What a cited answer is

A cited answer in AskMed is an AI-written explanation in which every factual sentence or clause carries a link to the published source that supports it. The answer opens with one direct overview paragraph, then adds only the sections the question needs, such as Mechanism, Diagnosis or Evidence Quality, each written as short bullets. The app turns the source links into numbered references, and the list under the answer tags each source as a Guideline, Research, Drug label or Reference, so you know what kind of evidence it is before you open it. Tapping a source opens a sheet with the passage AskMed relied on under Relevant information, a note under How AskMed used it, and a button to open the full source. An answer draws on 8 different sources by default, and you can choose any number from 3 to 12. Three suggested follow-up questions close every answer.

• Numbered citations right after the sentence they support, starting in the first paragraph.
• A references list with each source's title, type and link.
• A source sheet that shows the exact passage behind the claim.
• Thumbs up or down under the answer, with a short "What went wrong?" form.

How AskMed builds a cited answer

AskMed builds each cited answer in two steps: a search, then the writing. First, AskMed writes its own search query in precise medical terms instead of copying your wording, and adds words such as "guideline" or "latest guideline update" when the question is about management or current evidence. The search runs only on a fixed list of medical sites: journals and databases such as PubMed, the Cochrane Library, NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA and The BMJ; guideline bodies and agencies such as NICE, WHO, CDC, ESC and KDIGO; FDA and DailyMed drug labels; and references such as StatPearls, the MSD Manual and BMJ Best Practice. Then an AI model writes the answer from those results only. It is told to cite each source for what that source actually says and never to invent links, studies or statistics. Guidelines and health agencies come first, then systematic reviews and meta-analyses, then reviews and references, then trials and other studies.

If the search finds no usable medical source, AskMed doesn't answer from memory. You get a fixed reply, written in advance, that says no medical sources were found and asks you to rephrase it as a medical question. The same reply replaces any answer that comes back with no citation at all, so an uncited answer is never shown as if it were evidence. The full source list and the rules behind it are on How AskMed answers.

When cited answers help

Cited answers help whenever you need to know not only what is true but where it is written, which covers most clinical and academic work. A resident on a night shift can check a management pathway and open the guideline behind the one step they are unsure of. A nurse can look up why a monitoring step matters and read the source before explaining it to a patient. A pharmacist can see a drug's interactions, contraindications and monitoring, with each point tied to a label or reference. A medical student can paste a practice question, see why each wrong option is wrong, and follow the citations into StatPearls or a review article. A researcher can see at a glance which claims rest on a meta-analysis and which rest on a single trial, then pull those papers into a reading list. In each case the answer is a fast starting point that leads straight to the evidence itself.

General chatbots often answer from memory, and studies have found made-up references in their medical answers; Is ChatGPT accurate for medical questions? sums up what those studies found. Get AskMed on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, on Google Play for Android, or use it on the web.

Limits of cited answers

Cited answers have limits that come from how they are made. Each answer is written by an AI model, not by a doctor or an editor, and no person reviews it before you see it, so a sentence can misread its source or leave out something that matters. A citation shows where a claim came from; it doesn't prove the claim fits your patient, so open the source behind any point you plan to act on. AskMed searches a fixed list of medical sites, so evidence published only elsewhere may not appear. Sources can be out of date or disagree with each other, and AskMed is told to say so and to say which evidence is stronger. AskMed never gives drug doses, schedules or dose calculations; exact dosing comes from the current prescribing information. It is not a symptom checker and not for emergencies. If an answer looks wrong, tap the thumbs down and say what went wrong.