MedlinePlus, the National Library of Medicine’s consumer health Web site, was one of two US winners of the 2005 World Summit Award. The award is part of the program of the World Summit on the Information Society, a United Nations effort organized by the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force, and UNESCO.

Forty products representing Best Practice Examples received the award at a presentation in Tunis on November 16, 2005. They were selected from over 20,000 candidates from 168 countries. MedlinePlus received its award in the e-health category.

Joan R. Challinor, PhD, a member of the US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science from 1994-2005 and Commission Chair from 2003-4, accepted the award on behalf of NLM. She said, “What we try to do is to put out understandable information so that patients and their families can learn about whatever disease or health initiative they want to….Two million people from two hundred countries a day log onto MedlinePlus.”