NHS Direct provides health advice, information and reassurance to people living in England online and over the phone. To keep up with the growing needs of public healthcare, NHS Direct recently developed a suite of online health and symptom checkers to meet the digital requirements of an increasingly ‘always-connected’ populace. To do this, complex decision making technology was integrated with Sitecore’s advanced Web CMS to help patients to address their symptoms online. Following the success of the online health and symptom checkers, the next phase was to hire Sitecore implementation partner Fusionworkshop, to build a mobile website that would adapt content to a variety of mobile devices providing an optimized user experience. NHS Direct expects its web-based services will help some 5.5 million members of the public check their health and symptoms online in its first full year of operation.
“ We were delighted to be asked to work on this high profile and important project. Our experience with Sitecore and developing other mobile-friendly websites were a big advantage. The end result shows what can be achieved with a powerful CMS like Sitecore, good project management and the right skillsets. „
- Fusionworkshop Managing Director, Chris Short
Challenge
As part of NHS Direct’s ongoing strategy to provide digital services, one of their goals is to increase their reach, enabling more people assess their care needs autonomously and get advice on the most appropriate course of action. NHS Direct’s online health and symptom checkers have been a success since their launch in 2008, providing crucial support during the flu pandemic in 2009. Their online services continue to deliver significant savings compared to the cost of handling requests via call centers. The online health and symptom checkers were relaunched in 2010 on a Sitecore-based website. Following this relaunch, NHS Direct approached Fusionworkshop via Transform Innovation Ltd to create a mobile experience that was fast-loading, highly usable and that would provide consistent content to differing mobile devices.
Make the website easier to manage
NHS Direct’s content managers could not easily maintain and update the website, as the first-generation website had been developed and maintained using raw code. Even the smallest changes could not be made without republishing the whole website. NHS Direct stipulated that managing and updating content had to become much faster and easier for staff. This meant acquiring a content editor that would not require technical knowledge to update the website. NHS Direct wanted a solution to make managing images, documents and multimedia files straightforward, along with version control to allow individual pages to be published separately. They also wanted to introduce a degree of automation to manage the content publishing workflow.
Expand self-service capabilities
When NHS Direct endeavored to provide health services via the web, a primary objective was to empower more patients to address their symptoms online, thereby reducing the need for patients to visit their GP, Accident & Emergency units and other front line health services. Following the success of a desktop web experience, NHS Direct focused on creating an experience that would meet the needs of mobile customers, whatever their chosen device.
Consistent branding across many devices
To augment patient’s confidence and trust in using NHS Direct via the web on mobile devices, it was critical that the presentation layer remain consistent on each mobile device. However, since there are thousands of different devices, Fusionworkshop needed to provide a solution that would deliver content that appeared device-specific.
Solution
The team at Fusionworkshop assembled a team of dedicated specialists including strategy consultants, designers and usability consultants.
Maintaining a strong brand identity across a myriad of screen display sizes was critical to NHS Direct. Fusionworkshop built a set of Sitecore mobile layouts based on NHS Direct approved wireframes. Use of semantic, well-structured lightweight technologies ensured that the visitor experience was consistent across various mobile browsers such as RIM (Blackberry), Safari and Opera mini. By generating validated markup, and a standards-based approach the Fusionworkshop team were able to deliver a consistent experience for feature phones, smart phones and experience phones.
According to Charlie Young, Project Lead, Transform Innovation Ltd for
NHS Direct, "We recruited Fusionworkshop to support the development of NHS Direct’s mobile web service based on their expertise developing for the Sitecore CMS and their knowledge of mobile web. This combination of skills is a rare resource and - combined with their professionalism - provided the project with a skillset that ensured technological success. We’d consider working with Fusionworkshop on future opportunities – they’re a good natured team of experts who plan well and get the job done."
Result
Sitecore’s native multi-device rendering functionality allowed separate presentation layers to be created to provide device-optimized content. Within a matter of weeks, Fusionworkshop delivered a linearised version of the NHS Direct online health and symptom checkers, running on the chosen browsers, and optimized for the smaller screen sizes and capabilities. The mobile experience was tested and approved by independent usability experts across a range of handsets. The mobile version of the website was launched in October 2010.
According to Chris Short, Managing Director, Fusionworkshop, “We were delighted to be asked to work on this high profile and important project. Our experience with Sitecore and developing other mobile-friendly websites were a big advantage. The end result shows what can be achieved with a powerful CMS like Sitecore, good project management and the right skillsets.”
Solution Special Ingredients
- Integration with complex decision making technology
- Multi-device design
- CSS
- XSLT
- Spark files