UpToDate provides hundreds of patient information topics, allowing
healthcare providers and patients to share in the medical decision making
process.
Goals and objectives
For healthcare providers, we aim to provide high-quality, current,
evidence-based patient education materials that can be easily accessed and
used with their patients at the point-of-care, enabling shared medical
decision making.
For patients, we aim to provide a free and accessible web site with
high-quality, current, evidence-based health information to answer medical
questions and help make informed medical decisions. In addition, we offer
patients the opportunity to subscribe to professional-level materials for
a short term (one week or one month). This allows patients to read all of
our in-depth topic reviews and share what they learn with their family or
healthcare team.
About UpToDate patient information topics
Our patient information topics include an in-depth discussion of the
risk factors, causes, diagnostic processes, preventive measures,
complications, and recommended treatments for many of the most common
conditions.
Our patient information topics offer:
Integrated full color pictures, graphics and charts to help the reader understand difficult medical concepts
Extensive referencing with links to article abstracts
Links to other related topics and related search terms in UpToDate
Our patient information is written at a 12th grade reading level and may not
be appropriate for all patients. See the "Where to get more information"
section of each patient-level topic for other high-quality web sites that
may be appropriate for patients at lower reading levels or for patients who
do not read English.
Updating schedule and editorial review
Similar to our clinician-level materials, the patient information topics are
updated every four months based upon the recent medical literature. All
patient information topics are written and edited by our in-house nurse
practitioner and physician editors and reviewed by an external physician
author and section editor. Thus, our patient information is current,
accurate and evidence-based.
Refer patients to our web site for more information
We encourage healthcare providers to refer patients to our web site for
patients, www.uptodate.com/patients.
On this site they can view all our patient education topics for free
and/or subscribe to access the clinician-level content.
Link to us
Hospitals and clinical practices are welcome to link to any of our patient
information materials. See our
linking instructions.
About Patient Information
