Primary Care Notebook is a clinical information resource intended specifically to meet the needs of general practitioners and allied primary care professionals.
Our sources include peer-reviewed medical journals, clinical guidance from national and international bodies such as NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) and publications from healthcare regulatory authorities, among others.
Although the site refers to clinical guidance documents, it does not aim to provide a complete database of such guidelines.
Similarly, although the site has content related to specific medicines and devices, the site is not a repository of standardised medicine monographs – these can be obtained from sources such as MIMS, the British National Formulary or a medicine’s Summary of Product Characteristics.
Instead, the site aims to provide a quick reference resource for information that is of most practical relevance to primary care professionals.
Content localisation
The initial iteration of the content in the Pages section was written by a team of doctors based in the UK, and naturally the site's original audience was largely UK-based also.
Over time, the site's popularity has grown and the audience has become international.
As such, Primary Care Notebook has begun a localisation process, whereby the specific features and content available on the site are tailored to audiences in different regions or countries.
With more than 30,000 clinical reference articles to consider, content localisation is an ongoing, iterative process rather than a single project.
As such, readers outside the UK may wish to bear in mind that some content may not have been written specifically with their location in mind.
Although much of our content is relevant and of practical use in any locality, if you spot a page that you feel it is particularly important to localise (perhaps due to notable differences in routine practice or drug availability, for example), please contact us.
Editorial process
The content in the Pages section of Primary Care Notebook is maintained (i.e., written, reviewed, updated or deleted) via two primary work streams, which we describe as "reactive" and "pro-active".
The reactive process is designed to quickly identify new clinical developments that may have implications for the content of the site, such as the publication of new guidance and original research studies.
The reactive process involves the editorial team reviewing a variety of daily, weekly and monthly literature scans and medicine alerts to identify updates that are of sufficient relevance and importance to the audience to warrant the writing of new pages or reviewing existing pages for potential updates or, in some cases, deletion.
The proactive workstream is a rolling review process designed to assess the published material that may not have been reviewed or updated as part of the reactive process.
Because content updates that are made during the reactive process are, by definition, prompted by new developments in the literature, the reactive process alone does not guarantee that the entire database of content is reviewed in a timely fashion (naturally, the evidence base for certain medical conditions is less subject to change than for others).
As such, in addition to content amendments arising from the ongoing reactive process, the proactive process ensures that, irrespective of reactive updates, the entire content has received a complete review on a 3–4 year cycle.
To aid the reader in assessing the information, each published page includes dates outlining when the content was last updated or reviewed.
Editorial independence and funding
With the exception of material clearly marked as "Sponsored", all content on Primary Care Notebook has been developed by our content team independently from any third parties.
Editorial decisions are made based on the relevance and applicability of the material to the audience and are not influenced by any funding sources.
Details of the members of the content team, including their biographies, can be found on the Contributors page.
With the exception of "Pro" content, all of the content on Primary Care Notebook is available to registered users without charge.
The cost of producing the site and its content is funded by:
Display advertising.
Hosting a limited amount of content on behalf of third parties, including pharmaceutical companies (see below).
Sponsored material
Primary Care Notebook hosts a limited amount of material on behalf of third parties, including pharmaceutical companies.
All such material is clearly marked as "Sponsored", and it is hosted either in the TV section, the Podcast section or as a standalone "microsite".
No sponsored material is hosted in the Pages section.
All sponsored content is accompanied by a statement describing the provenance of the material, including details of the sponsor and its role.
Primary Care Notebook does not have any input into the sponsored content nor any control over it; we host the material only.
Primary Care Notebook's hosting of sponsored material does not signify that we endorse the content. Sponsored content remains the sole responsibility of the sponsor.
Because Primary Care Notebook has no input into or control over the content of sponsored podcast episodes, we do not sponsored episodes in the podcast feed that serves external podcast platforms such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Content errors and other content requests
If you have spotted something that may be incorrect or out of date, then please contact the content team.
Please include the URL of the page or pages that you are getting in touch about.
Please include specific details about what you think should be corrected or revised. Tell us which aspects of the page you feel should be changed, why they should be changed and how they should be changed. Please include supporting references if possible.
We will consider all such requests, but we do not guarantee that all will be implemented.
Contact
If you have a question about the content of Primary Care Notebook, please get in touch