Clinical Knowledge Summaries

In September 2012, and re-awarded in August 2017 and again in July 2020, Clarity Informatics was awarded the contract to provide clinical content, in collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), for the new Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) service available through the NICE website.

What is CKS?

CKS topics are aimed at healthcare professionals working in primary and first contact care in the UK and includes over 370 topics consisting of over 1200 clinical presentations or patient scenarios.

We identify conditions and symptoms presenting in primary care (to both doctors and nurses) and develop topics for the most common of these. Information is presented as explicit clinical questions with answers and supporting evidence.

The clinical content is continually monitored, reviewed and new topics introduced each year, supporting the implementation of UK national policies and guidance and addressing the information needs of the target audience of primary healthcare professionals in England.

How we develop guidance

We develop clinical topics using NICE accredited processes. Each CKS topic is thoroughly scoped, the target patient population identified, end-users outlined and topic-specific objectives described.

CKS provide succinct advice and recommendations for clinicians looking after most illnesses encountered in primary care. They are intended to provide quick answers to real-life clinical questions which arise during consultations.

Get Involved

Are you a healthcare professional?

Consultation with a wide range of stakeholders provides quality assurance of CKS topics in terms of:

Clinical accuracy.
Consistency with other providers of clinical knowledge for primary care.
Accuracy of implementation of national guidance (in particular NICE guidelines).
Usability.

All CKS topics are reviewed as part of a 5 year work programme and we write up to 10 new topics each year. Visit the NICE website for a list of CKS topics.

To participate we ask you to declare whether you have any competing interests. If you do not declare whether or not you have competing interests, your comments will not be considered.
External reviewers are not paid for commenting on the CKS topics.
Clarity Informatics will provide an acknowledgement letter recognising your contribution for the purposes of appraisal/revalidation.
All reviewers are given the opportunity to feedback about the CKS external review process, enabling improvements to be made where appropriate.
As an external reviewer you will be included in the Clarity Informatics forum where all electronic copies of agreed topics, as well as news about CKS developments, can be found.

If you would like further information or to take part in the external review process please contact using the Contact Us button with your name, email address, profession and the name of the topic or topics you would be interested in reviewing.

Do you represent a patient group?

We would welcome your involvement and feedback.
Involving patients and carers is a central part of our topic development and review processes.
Patient views and their experiences complement the evidence, knowledge and experience of healthcare professionals.

If you are interested in working with us and enabling your group, patients and carers to have an input into resource used daily in primary care in the UK then please contact us.

Are you a patient or carer?

We would welcome your involvement and feedback.
Involving patients and carers is a central part of our topic development and review processes.
Patient views and their experiences complement the evidence, knowledge and experience of healthcare professionals.

If you are interested in working with us and enabling your group, patients and carers to have an input into resource used daily in primary care in the UK then please contact us using the Contact Us button.