GPnotebook is a system designed to provide a concise synopsis of the entire field of clinical medicine with material organised systematically to ensure rapid retrieval of information.

The content of GPnotebook is based on clinical practice in the United Kingdom and provides a clinical reference guide for general practitioners and medical students; it may also be a useful reference resource for other health professionals. As well as being a clinical reference guide, GPnotebook also aims to be a tool for clinical education, clinical governance and continuing professional development.

The system was conceived whilst six of the seven principal authors were medical students in the early 1990s. One of the student authors was at Cambridge University medical school and the remaining five were students at Oxford University medical school. The system became a shared repository of clinical knowledge for the group and became a resource that was used in the Cairns Library at Oxford University as a reference resource for medical students.

In 1995, whilst four of the authors were still medical students, a rudimentary version of the database was published on floppy disks by Butterworth Heinemann. Also the database was awarded the prestigious Perry prize by the Primary Care Specialist Group of the British Computer Society.

The system content is continually updated and expanded. The database now comprises over 1.8 million words of information which is contained within 27,000 HTML pages with over 30,000 index terms. GPnotebook has been included as a resource on the UK National Electronic Library of Health Virtual Branch Libraries in Primary Care and Emergency Care.

A British Medical Journal article written by some of the GPnotebook authors ( 'Using computers to make more of your medical skills') includes some additional information about the development of GPnotebook.

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