Friday, May 7, 2004, 11:12 AM

Dear HONcode member,

We are proud to announce that HON has been named as winner of the eEurope Award for eHealth - 2004, in the category "eHealth Information tools and services for citizens." Over 100 submissions were received for the award. HON Executive Director Celia Boyer demonstrated HON’s online services before a jury at the EU High-Level Conference on eHealth in Cork, Ireland on May 6th. The HON submission focused on online information quality, addressing the fundamental issue of standards for the presentation of health information.

HON wishes to share this award with you and the nearly 4,000 accredited Web sites. This recognition rewards the efforts made by you with your HON-accredited Web site to maintain the HONcode standard at the national, European and international levels. Currently, Web sites in some 72 countries worldwide bear the HONcode seal. This recognition is also yours. Do not hesitate to link the HON press release at :
http://www.hon.ch/Global/eHealth2004/winner.html

HON online tools for citizens include the HONcode accreditation system for online information quality, HONselect directory and MedHunt search engine containing resources for over 30,000 health and medical subjects, and WRAPIN: HON's next-generation search application to guide consumers to trustworthy sources, analyzing online medical content to help lay users deal with the ever-increasing number of health-related web pages.

For nearly ten years, HON has focused on the essential question of the provision of health information to citizens: how can we incite information providers to respect ethical standards? To cope with the unprecedented volume of healthcare information available on the Net, the HONcode offers a multi-stakeholder consensus on standards to protect citizens from false or misleading health and medical information.

The eEurope Awards are organized by the European Institute of Public Administration, with the support of the Information Society Technologies Programme of the European Commission, to recognize innovative initiatives in the areas of eGovernment and eHealth within Europe. 

Thank you for supporting the HONcode initiative.

Celia Boyer
Executive director of the Health On the Net Foundation