Executive summary
For UK hospital specialists in 2025, the digital toolkit is evolving beyond simple search engines into a sophisticated ecosystem of AI-powered assistants. The landscape can be divided into three key categories. For point-of-care guidance, platforms like the UK-centric iatroX, BMJ Best Practice, and DynaMed with Dyna AI are providing fast, sourced answers. For deeper evidence discovery and synthesis, tools like OpenEvidence and the Cochrane Library are invaluable. And for academic research and literature intelligence, a new wave of assistants including Elicit, Scite, and Connected Papers are transforming how specialists map their fields.
For any of these tools to be adopted safely within the NHS, they must align with UK governance frameworks like the DTAC and NICE's evidence standards. The key to effective use is a "provenance-first" mindset, where clinicians prioritise tools that provide clear, verifiable citations.
Who this guide is for (and how to use it)
This guide is for acute and specialty consultants, registrars, Advanced Clinical Practitioners (ACPs), hospital pharmacists, and clinical academics in the UK. The most effective strategy is to choose one core point-of-care tool, one primary evidence engine, and two specialist literature tools, and integrate them into your daily ward round, clinic, MDT, and academic workflows.
Point-of-care (PoC) & guideline AI
iatroX (UK-centric guideline Q&A + citations)
- What it is: A free, UK-focused clinical AI assistant. Its Ask iatroX feature provides citation-first answers, helping you to quickly navigate to information within UK-accepted guidance and peer-reviewed research.
- Best for: UK hospital clinicians needing fast, on-the-ward checks of management pathways or prescribing nuances with direct links to verify against the source guidelines.
BMJ Best Practice
- What it is: A comprehensive point-of-care tool providing step-by-step guidance on diagnosis and management. It is free for NHS staff via OpenAthens and has a robust offline app.
- Best for: Structured, evidence-based summaries of common and complex conditions, with integrated calculators and EHR integration pathways.
DynaMed / DynaMedex with Dyna AI
- What it is: A leading evidence-based clinical reference that now includes Dyna AI, a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) assistant that provides conversational, cited answers from its curated databases.
- Best for: Clinicians who need deep, speciality-specific content with the speed of an AI front-end, backed by a strong "Best in KLAS" reputation.
Evidence engines (answers grounded in peer-reviewed research)
OpenEvidence (free for HCPs)
- What it is: A powerful AI medical reference and evidence-synthesis tool that is free for verified healthcare professionals.
- Best for: Asking complex clinical questions and receiving answers grounded in the latest peer-reviewed literature from sources like JAMA and NEJM.
Cochrane Library
- What it is: The gold-standard source for systematic reviews and the CENTRAL registry of controlled trials. Cochrane is actively exploring the responsible use of AI in its evidence synthesis pipeline.
- Best for: Finding the definitive, highest-quality evidence summary on a therapeutic intervention.
TRIP (Turning Research Into Practice)
- What it is: A smart clinical search engine that filters results by evidence type, allowing you to quickly find guidelines, systematic reviews, and RCTs.
Epistemonikos / L·OVE
- What it is: A platform that provides "Living Overviews of Evidence" (L·OVE), creating matrices of evidence for clinical questions, with AI-assistance used to classify new research.
Literature discovery, mapping & appraisal
For specialists and clinical academics, these AI research assistants are transformative.
- Elicit: An AI research assistant that can find relevant papers, summarise them, and extract key information into a structured table.
- Consensus: A Q&A search engine that extracts direct claims and findings from scientific papers.
- Scite: A tool that shows you "Smart Citations"—how a paper has been cited by subsequent research (e.g., if it was supported, contradicted, or just mentioned).
- Semantic Scholar: A large-scale AI-powered discovery tool covering over 200 million academic papers.
- Connected Papers / Litmaps / ResearchRabbit: These tools create visual graphs and maps of the literature, showing you the "idea lineage" of a paper and helping you discover related and seminal works.
Quick picks by hospital specialty
- Cardiology: Use DynaMed/Dyna AI for pathway-level summaries, OpenEvidence for comparing the latest trial data on new therapies, and Scite to check the citation context of controversial trials.
- Infectious diseases: Start with Cochrane reviews for definitive guidance on diagnostics and treatments, use TRIP for rapid guideline sweeps, and Elicit to create extraction tables of recent studies.
- Oncology: Use Semantic Scholar and Connected Papers to quickly map the lineage of a paper on a specific molecular target. Use OpenEvidence for trial synthesis snapshots.
- Pharmacy/therapeutics: Rely on BMJ Best Practice for its drug monographs and DynaMedex for its deep pharmacological content.
Workflow recipes
- Ward round check: A patient has a complex comorbidity. Use iatroX, BMJ Best Practice, or Dyna AI for an immediate check on what the UK-accepted guidance says.
- MDT evidence question: A new trial is mentioned. Use OpenEvidence or Cochrane to get a quick summary and a link to the review. Use Scite to see if that cornerstone RCT has been contradicted by later research.
- Rapid literature map: You need to get up to speed on a new topic. Use Connected Papers or Litmaps to find the key papers, then use Elicit or Consensus to get a rapid summary of their findings.
UK adoption & assurance checklist
- Citations & provenance first: Always prioritise tools that show their work. When quoting guidance in clinical notes or presentations, use the official NICE citation conventions.
- Procurement: Any tool being procured by an NHS Trust must have a passed DTAC assessment.
- Data governance: Avoid pasting any Patient Health Information (PHI) into non-approved, consumer-grade tools. Ensure any adopted tool has a clear data protection policy and, ideally, a local safety case.
Comparison tables
Point-of-Care Tools
| Tool | Coverage | Citation Model | Offline/EHR |
|---|---|---|---|
| iatroX | UK-centric | Yes (direct links) | App/Offline |
| BMJ Best Practice | Global/UK-friendly | Yes | App/Offline |
| DynaMed/Dyna AI | Global | Yes (strong) | App/EHR |
Evidence Engines
| Tool | Scope | Access | AI Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenEvidence | Trials, Reviews | Free (HCP) | RAG, Summarisation |
| Cochrane Library | Systematic Reviews | Free (England) | AI in pipeline |
| TRIP | Guidelines, Reviews | Freemium | PICO/EBM filters |
FAQs
- Is BMJ Best Practice free for NHS staff?
- Yes, access is nationally funded via NHS OpenAthens.
- What is the difference between all the literature mapping tools?
- Think of them as a stack: Connected Papers/Litmaps help you find the right papers. Elicit/Consensus help you understand what's in them. Scite helps you appraise their impact.
- Which AI tool is best for UK-specific guideline questions?
- For a free, UK-centric tool designed to help you navigate to NICE, SIGN, and other national guidance with clear citations, iatroX is the logical starting point.