Patient Information

The official website of the NHS in England provides a comprehensive health information service with thousands of articles, videos and tools, helping patients to make the best choices about their health and lifestyle.

Patient.info is a comprehensive directory of evidence-based clinical information, written by UK trained medical professionals and accredited by The Information Standard. It features health information leaflets, a symptoms checker, and discussion forums.

MedlinePlus is the National Institutes of Health's website for patients and their families and friends. Produced by the National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medical library, it brings information about diseases, conditions, and wellness issues in a simple, accessible language. 

Healthtalk.org provides free, reliable information about health issues by sharing people's real-life experiences. It gives patients the chance to read about other people's experiences and find information about conditions, treatment choices and support. Its sister site, Young People’s Experiences, looks at teen health issues. 

Contact a Family is a national charity for families with disabled children, providing information, advice and support. The medical information A-Z directory provides up-to-date and validated information on hundreds of disabilities and conditions. Entries are written so that they are accessible for parents and carers as well as professionals.

HeadMeds is a website for young people about mental health medication and is owned and managed by the national charity YoungMinds. The site has two aims: to make information about mental health accessible for young people, and to answer questions relating to mental health medication.

The NHS website features a health news debunking service called Behind the Headlines, where health news stories are examined and the facts are separated out from the spin.

Understanding Health Research is a tool designed to help people understand and review published health research to decide how dependable and relevant a piece of research is. Users are guided through a series of questions to ask about specific types of health research, and then to understand what the answers to those questions say about the quality of the research they are reading. 

NICE Evidence is a gateway to finding freely available, high-quality evidence-based material on the web. Search specific conditions using the A-Z topic option to find links to useful patient information leaflets.