Clinical guidelines and care pathways
Guidance is written to be complete, not comparable. The same recommendation is a numbered bullet in one document and a paragraph in the next, and almost every question worth asking is across the set rather than inside one of them.
What a row is
One piece of guidance. If a guideline has been updated, bundle the current version with the addendum or update notice that changed it, most recent first, so the row answers as the guidance in force rather than as whichever PDF was opened. See bundles.
These are published documents. Nothing in this setup involves a patient record, and it should stay that way — Ragextract is not HIPAA compliant and we do not sign Business Associate Agreements, which the app repeats on every Healthcare template before you build one.
The starting columns
This is the Healthcare group’s clinical guidance template, and the first one the app offers in that group:
| Column | Type | Prompt |
|---|---|---|
| Condition Covered | Text | What condition, procedure or patient group does this guidance cover? |
| Issuing Body | Text | Which organisation issued this guidance, and what is its reference or publication number? |
| Publication Date | Date | When was this guidance published or last updated? |
| Key Recommendations | List | List the recommendations this guidance makes for practice, strongest first. |
| Strength of Evidence | Text | How does this guidance grade the strength of the evidence behind its main recommendations? |
| Referral or Escalation Criteria | List | List the criteria this guidance sets for referring, escalating or seeking specialist input. |
| Care Pathway Diagrams | Image list | Each flowchart, algorithm or pathway diagram setting out the sequence of care. |
What it looks like filled in
| Row | Documents | Condition | Issuing body | Updated | Evidence grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guideline — adult hypertension.pdf | Hypertension in adults p.1 | National guideline body, ref NG-114 p.2 | 14 Mar 2025 p.2 | Graded A–D; most recommendations B p.9 | |
| Guideline — type 2 diabetes.pdfAddendum 2025.pdf | Type 2 diabetes, adults p.1 | Specialist society, ref SS-2019/4 p.1 | 02 Feb 2025 Addendum 2025, p.1 | GRADE; two strong, six conditional p.22 | |
| Pathway — suspected sepsis.pdf | Suspected sepsis, all ages p.1 | Regional network, ref RN-SEP-3 p.1 | 30 Sep 2024 p.1 | Not graded — consensus pathway p.4 |
Setting it up
- One workspace for the guidance set under review, and upload every document in scope. Reading is charged once.
- Bundle each guideline with its addenda and update notices, most recent first, before building the table.
- Create the table and take the clinical guidance template.
- Run two documents you know well and open every citation. Guidance repeats itself between the summary, the recommendations and the full text, and this is where you find out which one the column is reading.
- Refine the prompts, then run the rest.
Columns worth adding
- Review due as a date column. Guidance expires quietly, and a set sorted by review date tells you what to re-check before anyone asks.
- Supersedes as text — which earlier guidance this replaces. It is the question that decides whether a document in the folder should still be there.
- Applies to our service as yes/no, authored by you rather than taken from the document. A guidance set is only useful once someone has said which parts are in scope.
What to check before relying on it
- Every answer is a pointer, not a decision. The table tells you what a document says and shows you where it says it. It does not tell you what to do for a patient, and nothing here should be used as though it did.
- Recommendations and evidence grades are separate things. A strongly worded recommendation can rest on weak evidence. Keep the two columns apart rather than asking one prompt for both.
- Diagrams carry the pathway. Guidance often puts the actual sequence of care in a flowchart and only summarises it in prose, which is why the template has an image column — but a diagram in a cell is a picture to read, not a claim the product has understood it.
- Check the version before the content. On a superseded guideline every other column is a correct answer to the wrong document.
Roughly what it costs
Forty guidelines averaging 40 pages is 1,600 pages — 1,600 credits, $4, once. Four typed columns across forty rows is 640 credits; the two list columns are a further 960, because a list column costs more per cell than a typed one; and the pathway diagrams column is 160, charged like a typed one however many pictures land in the cell. About $8.40 for the set at par, and less with a bulk top-up. See how credits work.
The template’s prompts are illustrative starting points, not clinical definitions. Ragextract is not a clinical decision support tool, is not a medical device, and nothing here is clinical advice. Verify every answer against the guidance it cites before acting on it.