Meetings and courses specially designed for the project enabled evaluation grids to be created and permitted a fruitful interchange of skills and experience from a variety of professional information providers united in the common aim of providing patients with a service that meets their needs and puts them in control at a difficult time in their lives.

We introduce CIGNOweb.it, a database of oncology resources for patients, the general public and healthcare professionals. It builds on the previous Italian cancer resource Azaleaweb and offers quality-evaluated content. It meets international bibliographic and technical standards such as the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) for web content interoperability and the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) for bibliographic description with respect to the different media, applications, and user needs. Database content is supplied in collaboration with non-profit associations, libraries and the network of Cancer Information Points that is currently being established all over Italy. Expert and customer evaluation and feedback are provided for in the system. The graphic layout has been painstakingly designed to be user-friendly for a non-expert public. CIGNOweb.it is multicentric and will in time offer health information outside the field of oncology. It is designed to become a multilingual tool to organize, optimize and access patient information produced in the languages of the "newer" European countries. It is hoped that CIGNOweb.it will support other European nations in enhancing the structure and organization of their own-language patient health information and will contribute towards making a common health information portal of the European Union a reality.