MedlinePlus is an online information service produced by the

United States National Library of Medicine The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. I ...

. The service provides curated consumer health information in English and Spanish with select content in additional languages. The site brings together information from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

(NIH), other U.S. government agencies, and health-related organizations. There is also a site optimized for display on mobile devices, in both English and Spanish. In 2015, about 400 million people from around the world used MedlinePlus. The service is funded by the NLM and is free to users. MedlinePlus provides encyclopedic information on health and drug issues, and provides a directory of medical services. MedlinePlus Connect links patients or providers in

electronic health record An electronic health record (EHR) is the systematized collection of electronically stored patient and population health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared thro ...

(EHR) systems to related MedlinePlus information on conditions or medications. PubMed Health was another NLM site that offered consumer health information, in addition to information for health professionals. However, "PubMed Health, a portal for systematic reviews as well as consumer health information, was discontinued on October 31, 2018. The same or similar content is being provided through other NLM resources, namely PubMed and Bookshelf (for systematic review content), and MedlinePlus (for consumer health information)."

History

The National Library of Medicine has long provided programs and services for professional medical scientists and

health care provider A health care provider is an individual health professional or a health facility organization licensed to provide health care diagnosis and treatment services including medication, surgery and medical devices. Health care providers often rece ...

s, including

MEDLINE MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medic ...

and the various services that access it, such as

PubMed PubMed is an openly accessible, free database which includes primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institute ...

and

Entrez The Entrez () Global Query Cross-Database Search System is a federated search engine, or web portal that allows users to search many discrete health sciences databases at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) website. The NCB ...

. By the 1990s, more members of the general public were using these services as

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

access became widespread. But nonprofessional users could benefit from reliable health information in a layperson-accessible format. The National Library of Medicine introduced MedlinePlus in October 1998, to provide a non-commercial online service similar, for example, to the commercial

WebMD WebMD is an American corporation which publishes online news and information about human health and well-being. The WebMD website also includes information about drugs and is an important healthcare information website and the most popular cons ...

. In 2010 another NCBI service, PubMed Health, complemented MedlinePlus in offering curated consumer health information; PubMed Health focuses especially on finding information about clinical effectiveness of treatments. MedlinePlus initially provided 22 health topics in English, which expanded to almost 1000 health topics in English and Spanish, plus links to health information in over 40 languages. MedlinePlus was recognized by the

Medical Library Association The Medical Library Association (MLA) is a nonprofit educational organization with more than 3,400 health-sciences information professional members. History Founded on May 2, 1898, the Association of Medical Librarians, as it was known unti ...

for its role in providing health information. The site scored 84 in the

American Customer Satisfaction Index The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is an economic indicator that measures the satisfaction of consumers across the United States, U.S. Economic system, economy. It is produced by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI LLC) base ...

for 2010. In 2000s, A.D.A.M.'s medical encyclopedia was incorporated into MedlinePlus. The "Animated Dissection of Anatomy for Medicine, Inc." is a NASDAQ-traded public company based in Atlanta, Georgia, that provides consumer health information and benefits technology products to healthcare organizations, employers, consumers, and educational institutions.

Key features

The MedlinePlus website provides information in text-based webpages as well as in videos and tools. Other ways to access to access MedlinePlus content include MedlinePlus Mobile, which is a

point-of-care Clinical point of care (POC) is the point in time when clinicians deliver healthcare products and services to patients at the time of care. Clinical documentation Clinical documentation is a record of the critical thinking and judgment of a health ...

tool for clinicians, and MedlinePlus Connect, which connects to

Electronic Health Records An electronic health record (EHR) is the systematized collection of electronically stored patient and population health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared thro ...

(EHRs).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Medlineplus 20th-century encyclopedias Government-owned websites of the United States Medical search engines Multilingual websites National Institutes of Health Public domain