At a time of organisational turmoil, it is sometimes easy to forget our patients. It is also too simple to create a divide between those clinicians delivering a service at the front-line, those responsible for planning or commissioning and those whose main role is to lead and manage the services. The reality should be that there is no division but rather, a greater integration of front-line professional expertise and knowledge to: improve care to patients; inform the commissioning cycle; increase value from resources. The question has been asked so many times, sometimes from people with commissioning in their job title, as to: what is commissioning?; who does it?; how do commissioners know what we, at the front line, are doing and; how do they know what works for our patients?; is commissioning a management task or clinical role? This book is a response to all those questions and many more. It presents an opportunity for clinicians and other front-line professionals, of all disciplines and grades to maintain a focus on delivering high quality care and to engage with the commissioning agenda, more so during times of upheaval, as it is at that time that patients may too easily be forgotten. This book will hopefully encourage many front-line professionals to make a wider contribution at improving health care for the whole population, as well as for their own patients, contributing to the commissioning of safe, effective and sustainable programmes of care. The book will not make you an expert commissioner overnight, but is designed to prompt you to think how and where you can, perhaps already unknowingly do, contribute to the commissioning of care. It will raise some concepts, to help you, as front-line professionals to maximise value, whatever your position in the NHS. Furthermore, it is neither a technical manual on 'how to commission', nor is it written for the expert commissioner, although it will be of interest to that audience; rather, it is written with front-line clinicians and managers in mind to illustrate how - and more importantly why - they should engage in commissioning. In highlighting these issues, it is hoped that front-line professionals will gain a deeper knowledge of commissioning and the confidence to engage for their patients and profession.