UpToDate offers patients access to hundreds of educational articles about the most common medical conditions and procedures. These articles encapsulate the same information included in the materials provided for clinicians. As such, they give readers the information they need to actively participate in their care and to 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 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 articles
Our patient information articles 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 artciles also 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 articles 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 article 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 articles are updated every four months so they reflect the most recent medical literature. All patient information articles are written by professional medical writers with advanced degrees, and then edited by our in-house physician editors. They are also reviewed by an external physician author and section editor. Thus, our patient information material 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 articles for free, and they have the option to 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
