OrthoPath

Safety

Last updated: 2026-02-24

Assistive-Only Disclaimer

OrthoPath is an assistive clinical decision support tool only. It does not diagnose, prescribe, or autonomously order investigations. All outputs require independent clinical review by a qualified clinician.

Do not enter patient identifiers or any Protected Health Information (PHI) into this tool.

Safety Design Principles

• Assistive-only posture: Rule summaries and outputs are phrased as suggestions ("consider imaging", "assess anticoagulation status"), never as autonomous orders.
• Deterministic recommendations: All outputs are produced by a grammar-based rules engine with no probabilistic inference. Identical inputs always produce identical outputs.
• Escalation on no-match: If no rule matches the provided inputs, the engine produces a mandatory escalation signal rather than a silent empty output.
• Missingness gates: Missing or unknown inputs trigger a structured "insufficient data" output rather than a potentially erroneous positive recommendation.
• Banned language: Terms such as "diagnose", "prescribe", "order", and "discharge" are prohibited in rule output text and are checked automatically at protocol publication.

Banned Language Policy

The following terms are prohibited in all rule output text:

• diagnose / diagnosis / diagnostic
• prescribe / prescription
• order / ordered
• discharge / discharged
• recommend / recommendation
• start antibiotics (as a direct command)
• give medication (as a direct command)

The prohibition is enforced by an automated gate (`protocol_verify`) that runs at CI time before any protocol is published.

Limitations

• Safety checks are automated but not a substitute for clinical review.
• The banned-language gate uses negative-context exclusion (e.g., "does not diagnose" is permitted).
• This MVP has not been cleared or certified as a medical device.
• No human factors validation or clinical usability testing has been conducted to date.