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We are honoured 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.
The award was presented by Mr David Byrne, European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, who has particular responsibility for Food Safety, Public Health and Consumer Protection.
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.
HON wishes to share this award with its nearly 4,000 accredited Web
sites. This recognition rewards the efforts made by HON-accredited Web
sites to maintain the HONcode standard at the national, European and
international levels. Currently, Web sites in some 72 countries
worldwide bear the HONcode seal.
HON would especially like to thank the Direction générale de la Santé, Département de l’Action Sociale et de Santé (DASS – République et Canton de Genève, Switzerland) and the Geneva University Hospitals for their support since HON's creation in 1995, which have made possible the unrestricted delivery of HON's services, free of commercial influence. HON web servers are powered by Sun Microsystems.
HON dedicated the eEurope Award for eHealth-2004 to the memory of Professor Jean-Raoul Scherrer, great visionary of medical informatics, co-founder, defender and servant of the HON Foundation who passed on two years ago.
The eEurope Awards are organised by the European Institute of Public Administration, with the support of the Information Society Technologies Programme of the European Commission, to recognise innovative initiatives in the areas of eGovernment and eHealth within Europe.
WebCast archive of the awards ceremony
