MedlinePlus is a free Web site that provides consumer health information for patients, families, and Health care provider

Health care provider

A health care provider is an individual or an institution that provides preventive, curative, promotional or rehabilitative health care services in a systematic way to individuals, families or communities....

s. The site brings together information from the United States National Library of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health

National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...

 (NIH), other U.S. government agencies, and health-related organizations. The U.S. National Library of Medicine produces and maintains the site. MedlinePlus includes a companion site in Spanish, which offers similar content for the Spanish-speaking community. It also offers a mobile site in both English and Spanish optimized for display on mobile devices. Over 150 million people from around the world use MedlinePlus each year.

MedlinePlus contains:

• Health topics and a medical encyclopedia covering hundreds of diseases, conditions, and wellness issues.
• Drug information for both generic and brand-name prescription and over-the-counter medications.
• Herbal and dietary supplement information.
• A medical dictionary.
• Health news articles from Reuters
  Reuters
  Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
  
   Health Information and HealthDay
  HealthDay
  HealthDay's health news service is a division of ScoutNews, LLC, a private company founded in 2001 and based in Norwalk, Connecticut.HealthDay specializes in producing and licensing daily health news on the Internet for and The company's custom content division provides customized health articles...
  
  , plus press releases from major medical organizations.
• Directories> of physicians, dentists, hospitals, clinics, and other health care providers.
• Videos of surgical procedures and anatomy videos.
• Interactive health tutorials that use animations and sound to explain conditions and procedures.
• MedlinePlus Connect, a service linking patients or providers in electronic health record (EHR) systems to related MedlinePlus information on conditions or medications.
• A mobile site to provide authoritative health information for the growing audience of mobile internet users.

History

Throughout its history, the National Library of Medicine traditionally focused its programs and services on health care professionals. In the 1990s, the Library recognized that the general public was becoming a very important user group, due to the increasing availability of Internet access. This new user group needed access to reliable health information in a consumer-friendly, Web-based format. The National Library of Medicine sought to meet this need with the introduction of MedlinePlus in October 1998.

MedlinePlus debuted with 22 English-language health topics. Today, it has grown to over 800 health topics in English and Spanish and also includes links to health information in over 40 other languages.

Since its inception, the site has received numerous awards and media recognition for its quality and usefulness. The site consistently scores highly in the American Customer Satisfaction Index

American Customer Satisfaction Index

The American Customer Satisfaction Index is an economic indicator that measures the satisfaction of consumers across the U.S. economy. It is produced by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, a private company based in Ann Arbor, Michigan....

.