About GeNotes

Welcome to GeNotes – genomic notes for clinicians – the ‘just in time’ educational resource for healthcare professionals working in the NHS.

Put simply, GeNotes provides educational information at the point of need (In the Clinic), with opportunities for extended learning (Knowledge Hub).

The ‘In the Clinic’ articles are focused on the point of patient care, and each concise article is centred around a clinical scenario. The articles are organised into clinical specialties, with oncology, fetal and women’s health and paediatrics being the first of many (see ‘The GeNotes roadmap’, below).

In the Clinic articles are framed round two contexts:

1. presentation, or testing, stage; and
2. results stage.

Presentation articles are aligned to NHS England’s National Genomic Test Directory, and allow the clinician to:

• locate themselves through a generic clinical scenario;
• check whether their patient is eligible for genomic testing; and
• access information on how to request testing.

Results articles educate the clinician about the different types of results that may be returned and how these should or could be actioned, whether:

• clinically actionable;
• variant(s) of uncertain significance; or
• no clinically actionable variant identified.

The Knowledge Hub aims to be an encyclopaedia of resources and can be accessed via related links embedded within In the Clinic articles, or independently via the Hub’s landing page. The Knowledge Hub articles are organised into different themes, including:

• core concepts;
• conditions;
• genes;
• therapies;
• technologies; and
• genomics in action.

The articles feature a range of supporting multimedia, including animations, films, interviews and infographics. Clinicians can chart their own learning journey, reflecting their educational needs and interests.

Both In the Clinic and Knowledge Hub articles are also designed to link out to external sources and resources, and signpost to relevant management guidelines (including NICE), external educational resources and curricula.

GeNotes has been developed by NHS England’s Genomics Education Programme in collaboration with clinical and scientific experts from across the health service.

Following many months of consultation, writing, reviewing and a robust alpha testing phase, GeNotes is currently in a public beta phase while we assess user feedback and make improvements. Oncology, fetal and women’s health and paediatrics are the first specialties to be featured, and will be joined over the coming months by:

• cardiology;
• endocrinology;
• gastroenterology;
• neurology;
• paediatrics;
• pharmacogenomics;
• primary care; and
• nephrology.

If you would like to see your clinical specialty included as part of GeNotes and would be willing to contribute to the working group, please contact the GeNotes team.

If you are citing this resource in a scholarly or academic manuscript, please reference the publication found at:

Frost A, Kelly A, Bishop M and others. ‘Genotes – a ‘just-in-time’ genomics education resource co-designed with clinicians’. BMC Medical Education 2024: volume 24, article number 1,378. DOI: 10.1186/s12909-024-06059-w

Alternatively, when citing individual GeNotes articles or the whole website, please follow your citation style’s convention for online sources.

Each article’s webpage has a title, the last update (reviewed) date and the author(s) names. The name of the resource’s full name is ‘GeNotes: Genomic notes for clinicians’ and the publisher’s name is ‘Genomics Education Programme’, which can also be used as the corporate author. The publication location is Birmingham, United Kingdom.