We're hiring STEM graduates with strong statistics knowledge to help grade clinical evidence. See Careers.
Why I built SupplementDEX
At 16, someone I cared about was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Treatment left them bedridden with reactive arthritis. I asked the rheumatologist about a specific supplement — curcumin — and got nothing useful back: no efficacy data, no dosing, no primary sources. That frustration still drives the product.
I started law school, then spent every free hour reading clinical studies to find what might help. When the cancer recurred across years of treatment, I transferred into a BSc/MnD pathway at the University of Sydney so I could learn the science properly — anything to avoid that feeling of not knowing.
During this time I built a supplement quality tool for personal use so I could help my family member make better decisions. Over time, more and more people asked me about what might work so I started developing a basic product that might be useful. Some of those people were medical doctors, GPs, specialists, dietitians and other allied health professionals who wanted to improve their own understanding. Frankly, this shocked me, I thought the experts had tools for this purpose already. Before a single line of code was written for SupplementDEX, I had already built a scrappy internal tool in (many) spreadsheets.
SupplementDEX is the result of those years of collecting and reading studies. It exists so busy practitioners and families can see past supplement marketing and make decisions against human-reviewed evidence. We do not take that trust lightly. We understand the human cost of not knowing.
If you need access and cost is a barrier, see Our Story for how to request a student or hardship discount.
How evidence reviews work
Every condition–supplement pair in the database is graded from human clinical literature — primarily RCTs, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. We score three dimensions (Effect Size, Evidence, and Trust) and combine them into a DEX Score. Effect Size is weighted most heavily because a clinically meaningful benefit matters more than simply having many studies.
Reviews are written and maintained by our research team under founder oversight. Edge cases — dose, population, conflicting results, or combination products that do not map cleanly to the rubric — are escalated for human judgment. We do not sell ratings, placements, or sponsored reviews. See Independence for our conflict-of-interest policy.
We also consult with medical practitioners and allied health professionals who share the mission. If you want to help grade evidence, see Careers.