Guidelines for clinical practice are receiving increasing attention from clinicians and health services as a means for applying the best of current knowledge in order to maximize the quality and efficiency of delivered care. Earlier studies confirm the growing and widespread importance of this trend within medicine and the widely recognized potential for healthcare telematics as a means to enable the use of clinical guidelines to deliver processes beneficial to patients. This text explores the scope and need for further work in this area. The following issues are addressed: primary and community care; secondary and shared care; guidelines; and knowledge engineering/methodology. Specific clinical areas covered include: general medical practice (prevention, prescribing, chronic disease management); cancer; cardiology; neurology; gastro-enterology; rehabilitation; shared care; and critical care.