Methodology
How we read a clinic — and what we refuse to do.
Unmist surfaces public facts. It doesn't score, doesn't rank, doesn't editorialise. This page explains exactly what we read for every clinic on the site, how we extract it, and the things we explicitly will not do — so you can decide how much weight to give anything we show you.
Last updated: Oct 2026 · Independent · UK · Free
Step 01 · What we read
Four public sources. Nothing private.
Each public-record fact on an Unmist factsheet comes from one of the four sources below, or from a catalogue record we have checked by hand against them. We don't buy data, we don't ingest leaked databases, and we never read anything behind a login.
Source · 01
The clinic's own website
We read the clinic's main public pages — team, about, treatments and prices — before any blog or press archive. The crawler categorises each page (team, home, noise, other), so a name found on /team carries more weight than the same name quoted in a blog post.
Source · 02
Google Places — identification only
Used only for clinics not yet in our catalogue, and only in the moment, to identify which clinic you searched for. We keep nothing from Google except its place ID: the address on a factsheet comes from the clinic's own website. We show no Google ratings, reviews or opening hours — a score is exactly what we promise not to give.
Source · 03
UK press & advertising records
Published UK editorial coverage of the clinic. On a free factsheet press reads “not yet checked by Unmist”; a Verified clinic can send us articles about it, and each one appears with its title and a link only after Unmist has checked that it names the clinic. For paid promotion we link you to the public Meta Ad Library and the ASA rulings register rather than rehosting them. We do not read or analyse social media accounts or posts.
Source · 04
The UK statutory regulator registers
CQC, GMC, GDC, and (for nurse-prescriber practitioners) the NMC — the statutory bodies a UK private clinic and its clinicians fall under. We never rehost a register: each link takes you straight to the official register so you can check the live status yourself in one click. Voluntary professional accreditations (Save Face, BCAM, JCCP, BAAPS, BAPRAS, BAD, BCDA, ADI, RCS…) appear in a separate “Professional accreditations” block when the clinic has chosen to add them.
Step 02 · What we extract
The public markers on every factsheet.
The same template runs against every clinic. A marker is either present on their public site or not mentioned — those are the only two states. “Not mentioned” is not an accusation; it's a gap a sensible patient would ask about at consultation. Qualifications and register numbers on a free factsheet come from the clinic’s public pages or a hand-checked catalogue record. The factsheet labels the source and, where available, links to the official register so you can check it yourself; displaying a number is not confirmation by Unmist. Any future clinic-confirmed information in the paid Verified tier will be labelled separately.
Lead practitioner named
A specific human is identified as the medical lead.
GMC mention
General Medical Council referenced; we deep-link the register so you can verify in one click.
GDC mention
General Dental Council referenced — only shown for dental clinics.
CQC registration
Checked against the official CQC register for the specific location — only shown when relevant to the clinic type; otherwise we link you to the register.
Professional accreditations (Verified)
Verified clinics only, once Verified opens: voluntary memberships the clinic chooses to display — Save Face, BCAM, JCCP, BAAPS, BAPRAS, BAD, BCDA, ADI, RCS, RSM and others. Each links to the body’s own register.
Pricing transparency
Any indicative £ figures are visible on the public site.
Consultation flow
Booking process, what to expect, patient journey acknowledged.
Risk disclosure
Recovery time, side-effects or contraindications acknowledged.
Aftercare & recovery
Explicit aftercare guidance for the days following treatment.
Before / after gallery
Patient outcome imagery is published on the site.
And one panel that's not a check
Public footprint
A separate panel covers the clinic's UK press coverage. On a free factsheet it reads “Press coverage: not yet checked by Unmist”; articles a Verified clinic sends us appear with their title and a link once Unmist has checked that they name the clinic. The panel also links you to the Meta Ad Library and the ASA rulings register so you can investigate paid promotion yourself. We treat this as context, not as a verdict.
Step 03 · How we read it
The boring details that keep us honest.
A naive crawler will treat any name on any page as “a doctor at the clinic.” That's how directories end up listing patients, journalists and competitors as staff. Here is what we do to avoid it.
Section-aware extraction
A name on /team weighs more than a name on /blog.
Pages are categorised before extraction. A practitioner mention only counts as ‘works here’ if it appears on a team or home page, or twice on other pages with a qualification nearby. Names found only on blog or testimonial pages are excluded — they're almost always quoting someone else; if one slips through, report it and we remove it. Under ‘Who treats you’ we list only people whose role, as printed on the clinic's site, is clinical: reception, management and marketing staff are left out.
Published sources only
Press means published articles — nothing scraped from social media.
Press means editorial pieces that a UK outlet chose to publish. An article appears on a factsheet only after Unmist has checked that it names the clinic, with its title and a link to the original. We do not read, analyse or count social media accounts or posts, and we never characterise individuals. For paid promotion, we link to the public Meta Ad Library and ASA rulings register rather than making claims of our own.
Check date
Every factsheet shows when we last read the clinic.
Each factsheet shows the date we last completed a read of the clinic's own site. Re-reads are not on a fixed schedule, so a factsheet can be weeks or months behind the clinic's current site — check that date and confirm details with the clinic before you book.
Re-verification log
Completed re-checks are recorded — including ‘nothing changed’.
Factsheets are built by automated checks against public registers and each clinic's own public pages, with human oversight by Unmist. We aim to re-check listed clinics from time to time. When a re-check completes — including one that finds nothing changed — we record its date. Corrections are actioned as a priority.
Professional connections
Being open about our connections.
When someone on the Unmist team works at, owns, or has another professional connection with a listed clinic, we say so on that clinic’s page. Its listing follows exactly the same rules and published criteria as every other clinic — no better, no worse. This note describes a working relationship; it says nothing about the clinic’s quality or care.
Ask Unmist
The factsheet answers your specific question — anchored to that clinic only.
Ask Unmist answers rule-first from the cited factsheet. Only a question those rules cannot handle may be sent to OpenAI's gpt-4o-mini, and only after you agree. Questions detected as containing personal health information are blocked locally and never sent; do not type personal details. Output is split into what the factsheet shows, what to ask the clinic and a copy-ready message. Nothing the model says becomes a new claim on the factsheet — it is a reading assistant, not an editor.
Our promise
The four things we will never do.
These aren't aspirations — they're product decisions. None of the surfaces below exist anywhere on Unmist, and they never will.
No scoring or ranking
No clinic is given a number, a grade, or a leaderboard position. The factsheet template is identical for every clinic on the site.
No editorial reviews
We don't write opinions on clinics or practitioners, and we display no reviews or star ratings at all — not even other people's. The factsheet is the public record, not a verdict.
Payment never affects our independent findings
No clinic can pay to appear in search, change a marker on their factsheet, or remove a public-footprint signal. We don't sell ads. Paying clinics can add clinic-confirmed information (qualifications, prices, photos) — always clearly labelled with its source, and never a way to edit or hide anything from the public-record extraction.
No clinical claims
We never say a clinic is ‘good,’ ‘safe,’ ‘recommended,’ or any equivalent. We report what their website says, or doesn't.
Step 04 · Verify everything yourself
Every regulator claim links to the official register.
Regulator claims include the official search or profile link where one is available. Where a claim-specific source is available, we link it; otherwise the sources section shows the clinic-owned pages and public registers used for the factsheet.
GMC
General Medical Council
Doctors registered to practise in the UK.
GDC
General Dental Council
Dentists, dental nurses, hygienists, therapists, technicians.
NMC
Nursing & Midwifery Council
Nurses, midwives and nurse-prescriber injectors.
CQC
Care Quality Commission
Providers, locations and regulated activities in England.
Where we show CQC information, it contains public sector information from the Care Quality Commission licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. CQC regulates health and care services in England. Where registration applies, it is assessed for the specific registered location.
Clinic map pins use postcode-level coordinates from the Office for National Statistics postcode data, looked up via postcodes.io. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2025. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2025. Contains National Statistics data © Crown copyright and database right 2025. Coordinates are postcode-level, so a pin marks the postcode area rather than the exact door.
Limitations
What this doesn't tell you.
We can only read what's public. A clinic website may not state enough to determine whether CQC registration applies or which location is relevant. We publish a positive location-specific CQC status only when sufficient official-register evidence passes our verification standard; otherwise the factsheet makes no positive or negative registration claim and links you to the official register.
A clean factsheet is not a recommendation. Every marker present means the public record is well-presented. It does not mean the clinical care is good. We have no way of measuring clinical outcomes, and we don't pretend to.
Websites change. Every factsheet shows a “last checked” timestamp. If a clinic has updated their site since we last read it, the factsheet may be weeks or months behind until we read the site again.
Got something wrong?
Corrections are one click from every factsheet.
Clinics, practitioners and patients can flag anything they believe is inaccurate. We aim to re-read the source within a few days and either update the factsheet or explain why the public record reads the way it does.
Open the corrections pageTry it on a clinic you know.
The fastest way to understand Unmist is to verify a clinic you've already visited and see whether the public record matches your experience.