Editorial Quality & Policies

Criteria and editorial quality policy in our publications

Contents by medical professionals

• All publications of inviTRA are own content written or provided by medical experts with studies in the field of infertility, embryology or gynecology/obstetrics.
• All publications are signed by the medical specialist that has written them. When clicking on his/her name, a page with their profile will open. There, you will be able to read about about the academic title that qualifies him/her as an specialist in the field, along with the corresponding license number.
• The sources of information used must be official institutions, accredited professionals or references with an evident scientific basis. These references will be added to the context of the article or the "References" section of each post. In case the reference is accessible at no charge through the Internet, the author of the post will place a link, prioritizing these references.
• The medical terminology used can be found in the U. S. National Library of Medicine, which includes different vocabulary thesauri, like the MeSH, UMLS, RxNom, and SNOMED CT.

Multimedia and related contents

• The medical and health contents published will be accompanied by graphic illustrations, pictures or explainer videos that allow the reader to understand in more detail the most complex aspects of Reproductive Medicine.
• Any additional publication, illustration or graphic element attached to an article must be previously approved by a doctor or specialist that is well-versed in the area of Assisted Procreation.
• Pictures, illustrations, and other graphic resources contain an individual description in an external webpage from the main article. When someone clicks on the graphic resource, a new page will open to see in better detail the graphic resource and read the description. The purpose of this measure is for the graphic resource to have an individual meaning in case a user access an illustration directly.
• In case it is necessary to add other contents to a publication that have not been created or provided to inviTRA, we will request the corresponding authorization to get the right of publication and will quote the source of information.
• All publications, forum threads or replies are linked to related posts or any other supplemental content in order to allow the user to understand or a particular response or get more info.

Up-to-date content

• All publications include the date of the last update and last revision
• Publications are updated whenever we are aware that a particular medical procedure has changed, or if we consider it appropriate to provide readers with more info. By doing this, we guarantee up-to-date information in all cases. Moreover, if a doctor considers a particular question from a user relevant enough, he or she can add it to the “FAQs from users” section of each article in order for it to be seen along with the main content, thereby being visible for other users.
• To be able to add new quality contents, doctors, editors, and project managers must update their knowledge in the field regularly. To this end, attending the world’s most important events is crucial, including the ones organized by the ESHRE (European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology). The following are some certificates of attendance of the Project Managers: [PDF 1] [PDF 2].

Medical content that is comprehensible by patients and well organized

• The ultimate goal of inviTRA is that users understand the information they find. To achieve this, we ask doctors and specialists to use a professional but comprehensible language for each publication, illustration or video-interview, as if they were addressing to a patient at their office, instead of speaking as if they were giving a conference or speech to the scientific community.
• All posts contain a Table of Contents to help structure the contents and make it easier for users to read them.
• Information must be clear and well organized, with titles and subtitles that create a hierarchy of contents.
• Due to the participation in this project of multiple doctors and contributors, it is necessary that the structure of all our posts is commonplace for everyone. By doing this, we make sure that articles follow the same style and graphic design.

Advertising through contents is forbidden

• We don’t allow self-promotion of medical services through the articles. Clinics or medical professionals that participate or contribute with contents to our project are not allowed to advertise their services or clinics, or do self-promotion, using these contents. Thus, the purpose of the articles published, replies to FAQs or videos is to offer medical information and answer questions from patients from a medical viewpoint.
• All ads and contents published for advertising purposes will be duly identified with the text “Advertising” in order not to interfere with the contents or mislead the user.

Pluralism, impartiality & participation of users

• We believe in pluralism as a tool to boost the quality of our contents. Most of the articles that you will find at inviTRA have been supervised by several doctors (correctly identified) that work at multiple clinics or medical facilities (authorized as well). This adds a variety of viewpoints and professional experiences to the contents that help to boost the quality of our publications, as well as to make patients understand that medical issues can be solved via different treatments. These differences will depend on the doctor’s expertise or the resources he or she has at hand.
• After many years on the road creating medical contents, we are aware that a doctor can provide solutions based on the resources available at the medical facility he or she works at. In other words, the solutions to offer are dependent on the availability of resources at their disposal. So, thanks to pluralism and the participation of multiple doctors, clinics and hospitals, we preserve the impartiality of our contents and improve their quality.
• Our publications allow the participation of the community as well. We believe that communication is a two-way thing. Users must be able to post comments, raise questions, or provide their experience in relation to a particular content published by a doctor. Multiple participation of users enriches and improves the overall quality of our contents, thereby adding different viewpoints to a single topic (professional and patient perspectives).
• All publications, forum threads or replies can be easily shared on social media.

Translation process & adaptation to the language, country and situation

This project is available in four different languages: English, Spanish, French and Catalan.

As seen previously, one of the key premises of this project is pluralism, hence the fact that a large number of doctors and specialists are contributors. At the same time, they usually come from different countries, so they do not speak all three languages in most of the cases. For this reason, the following are the steps of the process we follow:

Review of the situation in the target country

During the translation process, we take into consideration the fact that the regulations of certain medical procedures may vary from country to country, as well as statistical information. Thus, the environment and own situation of a particular country cause their inhabitants to look for different information on the Internet, hence that we have no alternative but to adapt our contents so they can find what they expect.

International specialists

We take pluralism to another level, since doctors from different countries have participated in many of our publications. Given that this project is adapted to multiple languages, the fact that international specialists are involved allows us to migrate the contents to the environment of a particular country more accurately. For this reason, there are cases of articles written in a particular language by a doctor who is not included in the version of that article in a different language because the information provided only has sense in the country of the original author.

Support from specialized translators

If a doctor is not fluent in all languages this project is available in (English, Spanish, French ans Catalan), we prefer that he or she writes in his mother language so that a translator specializing in medicine adapts its later to the target language.

Translation vs. adaptation

Finally, and considering all steps of the process already explained, we can say that we prefer to call it adaptation instead of translation. Actually, what we do is adapting the contents to a target language and environment, always considering the situation of the target country or countries.

To this thorough translation process, we must add that all our articles are reedited and improved over the years, and that the comments and answers on each article are completely different, we can state that each one of the articles in different languages works as an independent post, completely adapted to the language it has been written in, and the target audience it has been written for.

Free contents

Users can visit all contents published on this project at no charge. This means that users do not have to pay anything to access information, sign up, post messages in the forums, see the clinics of the directory, access the fertility report tool, or ask questions via telephone.

Moderation controls, comments & forum

• We perform a thorough moderation control, with a strict moderation protocol for the comments posted on posts and forum threads to prevent the publication of inaccurate or misleading information.
• We perform an extensive control to stop forum spam, too. Also, we automatically delete any content that refers to the sell between individuals of medications, as defined in our Forum Rules & Posting Guidelines.

Clinic & professional directory

Clinics and medical professionals published on inviTRA’s directory or included in the fertility report we send to users include an extensive analysis as well as an objective description written by external staff.

• We verify that all companies and medical professionals listed in our directory have a medical license that enables them to carry on their profession.
• We check whether they have an in-house laboratory to carry out in situ the different reproductive technologies, or if they have to refer the patient to another clinic that has a lab.
• We check if they share their statistical data to the SEF (Spain), the CDC (United States), etc. and have a transparency policy.
• We check if they have an in-house surgery room.
• We list all the fertility treatments they offer to patients.
• We publish pictures of the clinic (facilities, building, etc.)
• We check other key aspects, including: if they offer egg and/or sperm donation programs, if they offer financing options, if they have 24-hour emergency medical care, if they have recovery rooms, the languages they speak, if they offer services for international patients too, and so on.

This information doesn’t replace your visit to the doctor

• The content published on inviTRA aims to add information and not to replace it, that is, our goal is not to replace the relationship between a patient or user and his or her doctor.
• All the publications, forum threads or replies include a footnote to warn our users that the information published doesn’t replace your visit to a licensed doctor in any case.

Prevention

Our motto is that prevention comes before detection and correction. For this reason, all medical publications focus, as long as possible, on the application of prevention measures in order to avoid future problems.

Equality policy

Our contents are based on a series of diversity and equality policies [See our diversity and equality policies].

Our seals & certificates

Certificate HONcode

inviTRA is in compliance with the HON (Health On the Net) code, thereby proving that inviTRA complies with the HON Code of Conduct for medical and health Web sites, and provides transparent and reliable health information online. See Certificate.

Websites Accreditation Programme (WMA)

inviTRA is a medical website endorsed by the Official College of Physicians of Barcelona. This certificate guarantees to users that the contents published are trustworthy and meet the minimum quality standards. [Certificate].

Certificado por la Agencia de Calidad Sanitaria de Andalucía

The Health Quality Agency certificate is the only quality certificate for healthcare websites issued by a government agency in Spain.

The Regional Government of Andalusia and the Regional Ministry of Health have developed what is probably the most prestigious seal for a health website in Spain, as it is the health certificate with the highest requirements in terms of criteria, protocols and standards to be met and as it is delivered by a government entity, it favours impartiality as there are no profit motives. [See certificate]

Certificate LSSI-CE

Audited by Business Adapter. Certifies that inviTRA complies with the Law on Information Society Services and Electronic Commerce.

Confianza Online Certificate of Corporate Social Responsibility

inviTRA is certified by Confianza Online for Corporate Social Responsibility. [View certificate].