The library
How the guides in this library are written.
The published health library holds 118 guides written for patients and families. This page says what a guide is, what it is not, how the evidence behind it is weighed, and what to do if one is wrong.
What a guide is
Each guide starts from a question a patient or a family actually brings. It draws on international evidence, with NHS and UK private care in view wherever the route through the system matters. Each one says what is known, what is not, and what to ask next. Sources are named so the reasoning can be checked.
What a guide is not
A guide is not medical advice and does not replace a regulated clinician. I do not diagnose, prescribe, recommend treatment or interpret scans. Where a question needs a regulated professional, the guide says so plainly and stops at that line.
How the evidence is weighed
A claim carries the weight of what stands behind it. A national guideline or a large trial is not the same as a case series of forty people, and a review that cites other reviews is not independent evidence. Where the evidence is thin, the guide says so rather than rounding it up. Where studies disagree, the disagreement is stated, not resolved by preference.
Dates
A guide carries a review date only once it has been read again against this standard. Until then it carries none. A date is a statement that the reading happened, not decoration, so it is added when that is true and not before.
Corrections
If something in a guide is factually wrong, say so and it is corrected in the guide itself, not in a note beneath it. Write through the contact desk. A correction that changes the sense of a guide is recorded on the guide.
Who writes them
One person writes and answers for every guide. There is no team, no account manager and no queue. Nothing illustrative on this site is passed off as real, and no analytics run anywhere on it. More on the About page.