Best government Web sites: National Library of Medicine's Medline Plus
When it comes to medical matters, people value straight talk above all else. The National Library of Medicine's MedlinePlus offers an astounding amount of medical information on a site that is easy to navigate.
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The site gets nearly 40 million unique visitors a month, offering plain-language advice on nearly any health-related matter you or your hypochondriac friend could imagine, from Alzheimer's disease to shingles. The site offers tutorials, basic descriptions and research information.
If you want to dig deeper, it offers a medical encyclopedia in addition to a way to search medical journal articles published on NLM's massive Medline compendium of life sciences and biomedical journal articles.
A consistent high scorer on the ACSI survey, MedlinePlus also has been praised by Newsweek for its ease of use. Much of the basic information comes with colorful, intuitive graphics that don't overwhelm the reader. Each page has an Espanol tab that links to the same page in Spanish. The Web has other medical sites, but the backing of the NLM imparts an extra level of trust. 'MedlinePlus brings to the table an enormous amount of information but also the trust you'd have in information coming from a government source,' ForeSee Results' Larry Freed said.
About the Author
Joab Jackson is the senior technology editor for Government Computer News.