Hello and welcome to hc2d, the new website bringing together the best of UK and global healthcare news media. My name is Chris May and I am the editor of Healthcare Today magazine and hc2d. There is a lot to the service we offer and new content and features are being added all the time. We have therefore compiled this FAQ to explain in a little more details what we do and to help you get the most from the service.

hc2d aims to provide a single repository of healthcare news and comment from a wide range of news sources. The content is backed up by an innovative personalised toolkit to make it easier for you to keep on top of the news agenda and to find, digest and manage news information. For those who prefer to keep on top of events in hard copy our magazine, Healthcare Today, provides a summary of the month's healthcare news in a structured easy-to-read format.

Currently, healthcare news tends to be packaged by disciplinary groups. There are journals for doctors, nurses, healthcare managers, therapists of every type; in fact every single discipline and specialist area seems to have its own publication. This isn't a bad thing; many of these publications provide an excellent service and we rely on them for our source material. But, in addition to the day to day news coverage of general health issues, it means that healthcare news is spread over a wide range of different publications and websites. Until now, there has not been one publication - or website - where all this material is gathered together in one place to provide an overview of the whole spectrum of healthcare news.

Both. The news content on hc2d falls into three categories:

1. Summaries of news stories (usually between just 100 and 500 words) providing distilled information on events. Each news article contains a direct hyperlink to its original source (or sources) if you want to go into more depth.
2. Commentaries where we pull together views on a single topic or news story from a range of commentators and editorials
3. Features where we provide a special focus on a subject in the news including background briefings on, for example, new policy initiatives, company profiles and significant healthcare trends.

In addition to our coverage of healthcare news, we have pulled together the best live healthcare news feeds from around the world onto one page. Similarly, the best healthcare blogs are all accessible from our blogs page and our books section keeps on top of the latest publications, usually with direct links to Amazon. Our content is expanding all the time so expect this list to grow.

We cover anything to do with healthcare. This includes information on new clinical service developments, health management, research & clinical trials, disease outbreaks, company news, e-health innovations, media coverage - in fact anything to do with the commissioning and provision of healthcare and the people that provide both front-line and support services in hospitals, public health departments, community and primary care facilities and the private sector. We do not cover the personal health agenda which includes, among other things, diet and fitness.

The coverage is primarily focused on the UK and, in particular, on the National Health Service, but important world healthcare events are also covered as is significant corporate news from the pharmaceutical and healthcare support industries which tends to be more global in nature.

We regularly monitor material from about 100 magazines, websites and journals with the occasional article generated from a new or unexpected source. Our full list of sources can be found on our sources page which is frequently updated.

Our primary aim is to collate, digest, distill and summarise healthcare news from other sources. However, we also provide our own blog and our Viewpoint section contains short essays on a variety of subjects from a team of healthcare professionals and stakeholders who feel passionately about their work and the services they offer.

It depends. When a new story breaks we will tend to let it run for its natural life before we gather the information and comment together. This can be as short as 24 hours or several weeks. Because the most popular healthcare journals are published weekly the majority of articles will be developed over a similar timescale so that the views of all the professions and commentators can be taken into account. But there is no hard and fast rule and it does rely heavily on news flow which can rise and fall quite unpredictably. On average, you should expect to see several new items added to each category over the course of a week and for all the viewable web pages to be completely refreshed each month.

All of our articles, commentaries and features are categorised and allocated keywords and phrases. This allows us to use database technology to provide a range of clever functionality to support you in using our site. The current list of tools available can be found here.

Healthcare Today is our magazine - published monthly - providing a valuable summary of the full spectrum of healthcare news and comment from the preceding weeks. In just 28 pages - and requiring just an hour to read - you can keep abreast of all the significant healthcare news from the previous month.

There are a number of ways to ensure you get what you want from our news service.

1. For most people, the best approach is to subscribe to Healthcare Today magazine to get a broad overview and then use the website to read the corresponding hc2d articles and any linked cross references. Articles in Healthcare Today are edited so the original hc2d story is often longer. Then click on the article source links to be taken to the original source material for even more detail.
2. Make sure that you are signed up to our email news summary to keep on top of the key stories from that week.
3. Use your account to set email alerts for any keywords that particularly interest you.
4. If you want to catch up on all stories for a particular subject (eg cancer), then use the Catch-up bulletin tool to generate a PDF of all articles between any two dates.