References in HealthPathways will soon feature clickable citation numbers that will give GPs a pop-up summary of the reference and allow them to click straight through to the source.

The update is the result of months of planning at Streamliners and the hard work of multiple internal teams. After the company’s IT team laid the groundwork for the new feature, three junior technical writers – who only joined Streamliners a few weeks ago – worked tirelessly to start setting up the format for publishing. 

The new format will gradually be applied across all HealthPathways sites by medical subject, so updating the references will not interrupt pathway development work.

Dru Norriss, Streamliners Project Officer Clinical Evidence Systems Development, says the new feature will add more credibility to clinical pathways.

“Having a consistent format and the ability to quickly access the abstract for many citations will improve the visibility and usefulness of the HealthPathways evidence base to users.

"But showing clearly the evidence and guidelines on which a pathway has been based, with quick access to abstracts and external evidence, also helps pathway users see the thinking which has gone into their creation."

A list of references will continue to appear in a drop-down box at the bottom of the pathway. There's also no change to the way clinical editors ask for references to be added. All they need to do is provided a link to the relevant article and indicate in the drafted pathway where they'd like the reference number to appear. Our technical writers will do the rest! 

Additional features to the new referencing format are in the pipeline and will be announced to the HealthPathways community in the next few months.

In the meantime, regional HealthPathways teams are advised to let their general practice communities know about the updated reference format via their next subscriber updates or a news item on their home page.

For more information, email Dru Norriss, Project Officer Clinical Evidence Systems Development.