About Oregon Health & Science University ―OHSU
As Oregon’s only health and research university, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) blends education, research, patient care and community outreach into one shared mission: to improve the well-being of people in Oregon and beyond. This mission forms the foundation for the university's patient care services. OHSU Hospitals and Clinics provide leading-edge health care services to patients throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. OHSUhealth.com is the online, patient-centered resource representing the health care and clinical services of OHSU Hospitals and Clinics and the OHSU Medical Group.

The Challenge
The ultimate goal of OHSUhealth.com is to make it easier for patients and consumers to do business with OHSU. Already a highly branded and recognized site, OHSUhealth.com’s next evolution was to migrate into a health information portal that provides timely patient education information in addition to connecting users to the appropriate services provided by OHSU.

Originally built in 1999, OHSUhealth.com offered valuable content and features for patients and health professionals. As content was added and demands for additional functionality increased, a redesign was scoped to make the site more robust and easier to use.

One of the biggest challenges in approaching the redesign was developing a platform that would accommodate the wide spectrum of OHSU clinical services. OHSU clinical services include a vast range of types, from larger entities like OHSU Cancer Institute and Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, which have created their own brand and have local name recognition, to smaller, specialty clinics. The challenge was to combine the entire range of clinical services into one cohesive and easy to use system with OHSU as the primary brand and at the same time allow for flexibility to support and promote sub-brands such as OHSU Casey Eye Institute, OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital and the OHSU Cancer Institute.

In order to make the portal easier to navigate, a level of intelligence needed to be added to the site, which would allow data sharing and ensure design consistency. This functionality required a robust back-end data management system comprised of both a Doctor and Clinic Database that could be shared with other systems, and a Content Management System which would enable distributed publishing and enforce data and design integrity.

Finally, OHSUhealth.com required custom features and coding that went beyond the components of a typical Content Management System. So the solution had to provide advanced Content Management Features with the flexibility to adapt to OHSU’s needs.

The Solution
Design
The site was redesigned to address these challenges head-on. The new OHSU Health system, www.OHSUhealth.com, provides site visitors with an attractive interface utilizing bright colors against a white background that results in a more engaging user experience and a positive, proactive approach to health care.

The improved OHSU Health interface also connects all site features and major sections under a cohesive OHSU brand, countering the impression that you are visiting a collection of separate sites with varying degrees of brand consistency. Strict interface rules and a detailed style guide were established to enforce brand integrity while allowing for a small degree of design freedom within each major section or “subsite.”

Content
Most importantly, the site provides value to target audiences by providing timely and detailed answers to their most important questions. An extensive Web health care user analysis was conducted that pointed to two primary goals for site visitors: - Find information on common health topics - Find a doctor or clinical service The new OHSU Health site reorganized its content to emphasize these two content areas by connecting health topics to OHSU services, transitioning visitors more smoothly from education to action.

Navigation
The improved navigation design makes it easier to find relevant information by connecting all data within an intelligent navigation structure. Users researching conditions can quickly find OHSU services related to those conditions, while users looking at clinical services are also connected to supporting patient education materials on the conditions treated by those services.

Site Management
Maintaining a sophisticated site with many content contributors requires an advanced content maintenance tool. Pacific Intermedia completed an extensive evaluation of content management systems. The goal was to find a CMS that is a sophisticated Web content management tool yet is flexible enough to meet a wide variety of content needs. It needed to integrate easily with custom design and features while providing an intuitive authoring environment that did not over-complicate the workflow. Other important considerations were: cost, time of deployment, technical infrastructure, scalability and overall long-term stability of the product and company.

The Content Management System chosen for this project was CommonSpot by PaperThin. CommonSpot contains advanced workflow, robust security, and excellent versioning and scheduling features, while also providing the ability to integrate the custom features critical to OHSU Health’s success. OHSU selected and has advocated the CommonSpot Content Management System as a university-wide tool.

One of the main features of the OHSUhealth.com site is a shared database containing doctor and clinic information that sits outside of the CommonSpot infrastructure. The OHSU Doctor Clinic Core application was developed in ColdFusion and utilizes a MS SQL database and is fully integrated within the CommonSpot architecture.

The OHSU Health Platform
The basic framework of OHSU Health is comprised of the CommonSpot CMS tool coupled with custom features unique to OHSU. Each piece of the solution enhances value to both internal and external audiences.

The CommonSpot System

• Enforce consistency on the presentation layer
• Manage and display Health Topics, About OHSU, News and Events, Patient and Visitor Guide, and access to Career information 
• Interpret and talk with the Doctor and Clinic Database (DCC) 
• Act as a robust and advanced Content Management System for OHSUhealth and its subsites.

Other Custom Features

• Doctor and Clinic database supplying data to the CommonSpot system for display
• Data import tool importing outside Health Topic database for over 1,500 pages 
• Related Links component keeping navigation relative to current location 
• Save/Print/Email Page feature 
• Quick View – dynamic site map feature
• META tagging and optimization criteria built into site pages

The Future of OHSUhealth.com
The OHSU Health Web site launched in spring 2004 and serves as a platform for future development and growth. CommonSpot powers the site, and many of the custom features have been set up and integrated into the system. As new OHSU clinical services and centers are introduced into the system they are provided a developmental roadmap that gives them the flexibility they need without compromising the user experience or the OHSU Health branding efforts.

Site Information:
URL: www.OHSU.edu/health
Average Monthly Page Views: 529,693
Platform: Windows 2000/NT, ColdFusion, SQL Database, CommonSpot CMS, Dieselpoint Search Engine
Type: Internet
Implementation Partner: Pacific Intermedia