About Values in Care

Who it is for

Anyone facing a choice where more than one option is reasonable: a patient, a family member, someone deciding on behalf of a person who cannot. Clinicians, chaplains, and care teams use the same material to prepare a conversation from the other side.

Who made it, and why

Saeb A. Ahsan, an analytics and civic-technology practitioner in Michigan. Medical evidence can say which options are reasonable. It cannot say which tradeoffs a particular person should accept, and that half of the conversation usually happens without preparation.

Self-funded. No industry money. If outside support is ever accepted, the terms and the funder are named on the independence page before anything is published under it.

Values in Care is an independent research and educational project serving patients, families, caregivers, clinicians, chaplains, and other care partners. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, reviewed by, or representing any employer, health system, payer, religious institution, interfaith body, or other organization unless a specific relationship is explicitly documented.

Has anyone checked it

Every clinical or cultural claim carries a citation. Independent expert review is not complete. A citation says where a claim came from; it does not mean anyone outside this project has checked it. Both states are shown on the page, and reviewers are credited by name once they have reviewed something.

Evidence is strongest in serious illness, palliative care, spiritual care, and caregiving. Elsewhere it ranges from partial to general, and each page says which.

What it is not for

Not medical, legal, religious, emergency, or billing advice. It does not diagnose, recommend a treatment, or record consent. No tool here is a validated patient decision aid; that label has a higher bar, described on the methodology page. Individual decisions need your treating team.

Organizations are named here when their public work is cited. Nothing more is implied.

Check the work

• MethodologyHow claims are sourced, reviewed, and labeled
• Integrity reportMachine checks, failures, warnings, run date
• Independence and fundingWhat would change if funding changed
• Coverage mapWhat is published, partial, in development, missing
• LimitationsWhat this should not be used for
• PrivacyWhat is stored, where, and for how long
• BibliographyEvery source cited across Values in Care