Medical Schema for YMYL Health Content: MedicalCondition, Drug, Physician, and AI Citation Requirements
Medical schema - MedicalCondition, Drug, MedicalProcedure, Physician - tells AI systems what a health page is about in machine-readable terms. Google uses this to power health Knowledge Panels and AI Overviews for medical queries. Because health content is YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), medical schema must be paired with verified physician authorship and cited clinical sources - schema alone is not enough.
For the authority requirements, see YMYL AEO and E-E-A-T for AI.
When to use
Use for pages about a specific medical condition, disease, or syndrome - 'Type 2 Diabetes', 'Hypertension', 'Rheumatoid Arthritis'. Each condition should have its own dedicated URL with MedicalCondition schema.
Key properties
signOrSymptom (list of MedicalSymptom), riskFactor (list of MedicalRiskFactor), possibleTreatment (Drug or MedicalTherapy), code (ICD-10 or SNOMED via MedicalCode), associatedAnatomy.
{
"@type": "MedicalWebPage",
"about": {
"@type": "MedicalCondition",
"name": "Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus",
"alternateName": ["T2DM", "T2 Diabetes"],
"code": {
"@type": "MedicalCode",
"code": "E11",
"codingSystem": "ICD-10"
},
"signOrSymptom": [
{ "@type": "MedicalSymptom", "name": "Polydipsia" },
{ "@type": "MedicalSymptom", "name": "Polyuria" }
]
},
"reviewedBy": {
"@type": "Physician",
"name": "Dr. Sarah Chen, MD",
"medicalSpecialty": "https://schema.org/Endocrinology"
}
}Physician reviewer
Every medical content page must have a named, credentialed medical professional reviewer with Physician schema (name, specialty, hospital affiliation, sameAs links to LinkedIn/ORCID).
Review date visible
Publish a visible 'Medically reviewed on [date]' statement on every page alongside the author attribution. AI systems extract this as freshness and review-process evidence.
Clinical sources cited
Cite peer-reviewed sources (PubMed, Cochrane, clinical guidelines) with direct links. AI systems weight in-text citations as evidence of clinical accuracy.
MedicalOrganization publisher schema
If your organization is a healthcare entity, implement MedicalOrganization or Hospital schema for the publisher - strengthens E-E-A-T at the entity level.
ICD-10 or SNOMED codes
Adding medical coding systems (ICD-10 code property on MedicalCondition) creates machine-readable disease entity identification that AI systems use for medical query matching.