About Primary Care Notebook
Primary Care Notebook is a clinical reference tool focused on the needs of the family physicians.
Since its launch in 2001, the site has become one of the "go-to" resources for family physicians, internal medicine physicians and other primary care professionals. Launched in the UK (where it is known as "GPnotebook"), the site has grown in popularity and is now used by tens of thousands of professionals worldwide on a daily basis.
The site comprises more than 30,000 concise, interlinked clinical reference articles, each covering a specific clinical topic. Its ease and speed of use mean that, for many users, it is an indispensable consultation aid.
In recent years, the site has expanded to include resources specifically designed to aid physician education and professional development.
Helping family physicians for more than 20 years
- Humble beginnings
- The resource that has become Primary Care Notebook has its origins in a project initiated by a group of medical students at Oxford University, UK, seeking an effective way of organising, indexing and sharing what they were learning.
- A different way of presenting medical knowledge
- Wanting to organise their knowledge in a non-linear, non-sequential manner, the team created authoring software to link small "packets" of information in a database.
How we organise and maintain our content
- Concise articles
- Unlike many clinical reference resources, we avoid the long-form approach typically used in textbooks.
- A web of information
- Rather than long pages containing thousands of words and divided into sections, we present our material as a complex web of interlinked small "packets" of information.
- Quick and easy to use during consultations
- In this way, if you do not find what you're looking for on the first page you visit, you can typically drill down to the information you need within a few clicks.
- Continually updated and refined
- The site is updated on a daily basis. We take a pragmatic approach to authoring: we look out for topical issues, keep track of literature (through daily searches), and update material in response to user feedback.
Meet the content team
The content of the site is written, reviewed, edited and presented by a team of practising clinicians. Find out more about the team members (both past and present).