Kaiser Health News

Summary

KaiserHealthNews.org is the primary publishing platform for its in-depth stories and news summaries of major health care news. KHN also partners with major news organizations to distribute content. Working with Velir, KHN selected Sitecore’s CMS to help achieve its goals.

“Sitecore has made updating our site very accessible. With an average of eighteen articles from multiple writers and editors posted to our site each day, we appreciate how intuitive and easy-to-use Sitecore is.”

-Peggy Girshman, Executive Editor, Online, Kaiser Health News

Challenge

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nonprofit news organization committed to in-depth coverage of health care policy and politics. KHN is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit private operating foundation, based in Menlo Park, California, dedicated to producing and communicating the best possible analysis and information on health issues.

As the field of journalism continues to change, Kaiser wanted to become more news oriented and desired a new flagship site for this effort. The goal was to provide KHN journalists and editors with state-of-the-art online publishing tools and give readers a high-quality experience. Previously, Kaiser's sites have been built using other content management software. However these were deemed too limiting for the scope of KHN.

Solution

Kaiser has been a client of Velir, a Sitecore partner, for eight years, successfully working together on more than a dozen high profile websites. Sitecore was selected as the development platform due to its power, stability, flexibility, and Velir’s successful implementations of other news-focused sites.

Working closely with Kaiser Health News, Velir built the site with Sitecore to feature a wide range of functionality including related content, RSS, workflow, meta-tagging, and a widget with the day’s headlines. The site also features many integration points with third-party solutions including the Google Search Appliance, Google Analytics, Brightcove for video content, Add This for social bookmarking, Wordpress, Feedburner, and Telerik calendar. 

“This project was interesting because it included integration with many different components and technologies,” says Daniel DeLay, Senior Developer, Velir. “Using Sitecore as the hub or central point of these integrations contributed to a stable, maintainable, and well performing web site.  Additionally, Sitecore’s modular framework allowed our team developers to build in parallel effectively and efficiently.” 

Result

Since launching at the beginning of June, Kaiser Health News has partnered with, and been quoted by, some of the top news sources in the country, including The Washington Post and National Public Radio.  The business goals of the site were achieved: the site provides a positive user experience, and writers and editors have the flexibility and control they need. Feedback has been very positive.

According to Peggy Girshman, Executive Editor, Online, Kaiser Health News, “Sitecore has made updating our site very accessible. With an average of eighteen articles from multiple writers and editors posted to our site each day, we appreciate how intuitive and easy-to-use Sitecore is.”

Technical Description

Solution Special Ingredients

• Google Search Appliance
• Google Analytics
• Brightcove for video content
• Add This for social bookmarking
• Wordpress
• Feedburner
• Telerik calendar