Patient-Focused Resource Improves the User Experience
On the left is the redesigned website compared to the previous website on the right.
A year of consulting with stakeholders across the CC Community coupled with behind-the-scenes painstaking development has paid off with the launch of a completely new NIH Clinical Center website.
With a renewed focus on patients, the new site is streamlined with a user-friendly design that makes it easier to learn about the unique care and research offered at the Clinical Center.
The redesign work on the website not only strengthens compliance and branding but makes the overall user experience on the Clinical Center website comparable to that of large academic medical centers. Because the CC is a world-renowned research hospital, its homepage gets about one million visits a year. With these changes and upgrades, the hospital's website now conveys this sense of importance.
Planning for the re-design began in the Fall of 2023 and focused on improving the look and navigation of the site to comply with modern design and web development best practices. The new website was built in consultation with staff and leadership of CC departments, the Patient Advisory Group, the NIH OD, and countless others.
Recognizing that more and more people use their phones as their main means to gather information, the re-design team planned to improve the mobile experience for visitors, while maintaining a site rich with easy-to-find information patients, their families and NIH staff would need.
One of the benefits of a comprehensive re-design is the ability to "start from scratch" and lay a solid foundation. This approach allows for clean design and will ensure a modern design template that can seamlessly add new features in the future, like appropriate features that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help patients find essential information.
While the new website is now "live", a never-ending quest to strengthen, evolve, and improve its ease of use is, in some ways, just beginning. Feedback tools have been incorporated into the site's pages to gather quick and actionable feedback to improve user's experiences. And with the modern design, comes opportunities for staff in the hospital's departments to lean into the new look and easily update the information they share with patients and the public about the work they do.
"Making sure that our patients were in our minds and at the center of each step of our design process, means that we had the chance to deliver something really special," said Cindy Fisher, the Web Lead for the hospital's Office of Communications and Media Relations, the team who spearheaded the work on the website. "It was also gratifying and very valuable to engage with so many NIH staff and stakeholders. We hope those connections and conversations continue."
The new site conforms with government policies on web design and Section 508 compliance. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a federal law that requires government agencies to make its information and communication technology accessible to people with disabilities. Another piece of legislation, the 21st-century Integrated Digital Experience Act (IDEA), is intended to make federal websites work together to improve mobile experiences, integrate with one another, and improve the user experience.
Among the improvements to the site is the consolidation of information and reducing webpages from 2,300 to approximately 1,800 pages (a little over a 20% reduction). In addition to streamlining the site, this will reduce clutter and improve the quality of search results.
Additional examples of improvements for the new site include consolidation of multiple calendars of events into a unified calendar. Similarly, visitors can find the hospital's senior leaders in one location rather than having to go to multiple pages. The new site will also include more intuitive ways to search for these individuals. Finally, the number of PDFs will be reduced, since text within PDFs are not always search-friendly nor easily accessible on phones or tablets.
The site has easy access to the Clinical Center's patient portal, ensuring that patients can effortlessly find information related to their treatment and their records.
"After a year of hard work and a significant financial investment, it is great to see the work on the new website come to fruition. Thanks to the Clinical Center Office of Communications and Media Relations, led ably by Justin Cohen, and all who provided input that led to the successful re-design. We are – of course – interested in feedback from those who visit the website, patients, staff and families alike," said Dr. James Gilman, the CEO of the NIH Clinical Center.
- Donovan Kuehn