How we source everything
This site asks you to make expensive, personal decisions. You are entitled to know who wrote it, where every claim came from, and what we will not do.
Who writes this
SteadySkin is written by Ajith Dhati, who has had vitiligo since he was nineteen and has used home narrowband UVB for years. He is not a clinician. He is a patient who does the reading.
That means two things. First, the lived-experience content here is first-hand and specific in a way that a content agency cannot fake. Second, every clinical claim is sourced to people who are qualified, and cited so you can check it.
Nothing on this site is “medically reviewed.” We will not use that phrase unless a named, credentialed clinician has actually reviewed the page and agreed to be named. Claiming a review that did not happen is worse than not having one.
How sources are ranked
Every source gets exactly one tier, and the tier is shown to you, not just stored.
| Tier | What it is | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Regulatory / guideline | FDA labels and clearances, CMS, NIH, published clinical guidelines, payer medical policies |
| 2 | Clinical research | Randomised trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, large prospective studies |
| 3 | Supporting research | Cohort, registry, pragmatic and health-economics studies |
| 4 | Manufacturer | Device manuals, specifications, warranty terms, manufacturer regulatory filings |
| 5 | Patient education | Disease foundations and academic centre patient education |
| 6 | Lived experience — not evidence | Forums, community posts, personal accounts — including the founder’s own |
Tier 6 never supports a claim. If a forum thread shows that people are confused about refill codes, that tells us what to write about. It is not evidence that anything is true, and our build fails if a published claim cites one.
Sources are also flagged independentor not. A device manual is a perfectly good source for that device's specifications and a bad one for whether you should buy it. We say which is which, in words — never by colour alone.
How confident we are
Four grades, deliberately coarse. A ten-point scale would imply a precision that does not exist in this evidence base.
- Well established
- Reasonably supported
- Limited evidence
- Not established
“Well established” requires at least two independent tier 1 or tier 2 sources that agree. That rule is enforced by the build, not by good intentions.
What we will never publish
- A dose, a treatment time, or a J/cm² value — anywhere, in any tool, for any reason
- A conversion between devices, including anything labelled “approximate”
- A statistic without a citation to a real, dated source. Every number here is one you typed, one computed from what you typed, or one we can point at
- A dosing table copied from a clinical document, even a properly cited one
- Home treatment framed as simply better than clinic treatment
- A specific device recommended to you based on your condition
- Anything you type into a tool, anywhere. It stays on your device
How this stays current
Payer policies, device specifications and lamp part numbers all change. Automated checks run on a schedule and open a change request; a human reviews every one before it goes live. Nothing edits this site automatically.
Every claim carries the date it was last checked, and that date is shown to you. When a page passes its review date, it says so. We would rather show you that a page is six months old than quietly let you assume it is fresh.
When we get it wrong
We will. Every substantive correction is logged with a date, what was wrong, and what it says now — see corrections. We do not quietly edit and move on.
If you have found an error, especially if you are a clinician or you work in insurance, please tell us. Corrections from readers are the cheapest quality mechanism this site has.
How this is paid for
SteadySkin publishes a free iOS app with an optional paid subscription. That is currently the only way this site makes money. There is no advertising, no sponsored content, and no paid placement in anything we rank.
If that ever changes, it will be disclosed on the disclosure page and next to the link itself — not buried. Clinical evidence and insurance facts will never sit behind a paywall.