Healthcare organization revamps its intranet and Web sites

Healthcare organization revamps its intranet and Web sites Sharp Healthcare wanted to redesign its Web presence with a Web content management (WCM) solution that could handle a huge volume of traffic and that would be easy to use and flexible. The company chose CommonSpot from Paperthin and in less than a year, reinvented several Web sites as well as its corporate intranet.

Sharp’s intranet, called SharpNet, has more than 18,000 authenticated users who visit it about 23,000 times each day to access Web tools, enterprise resource planning tools, medical applications and company information. Also, every credit card transaction across Sharp’s network of hospitals and clinics runs through the intranet.

Lawrence Turner, manager of Web development at Sharp HealthCare, says, “Healthcare demands rapid development to meet the changing needs of the market. CommonSpot offers us the flexibility needed to develop custom applications and easily integrate with our legacy Web systems and applications. And with hundreds of content contributors, we needed something that everyone would understand right out of the box. We needed a WCM solution ... that provided the tools we needed to continue to further develop and expand the Web site with marketing and community-friendly features such as multimedia, taxonomy and blogs.”

Launched in August 2009, Sharp’s new Web presence includes:

• MySharp--a patient gateway where members can request or cancel physician appointments; subscribe to Sharp’s e-mail newsletters; get help with bills, make a payment or update billing information; and request prescription refills.
• A multimedia library where users can watch patient story videos and learn about the latest Sharp medical technology; hear Sharp-affiliated doctors and experts discuss health topics via podcast; take a virtual tour of Sharp’s patient rooms and surgery centers; and learn about the human body through animated illustrations.
• Community applications--apply for a job, become a volunteer, e-mail a patient, find a doctor, make a donation, send a gift, take a quiz, view a baby photo, etc.
• Social media--follow Sharp HealthCare updates (news, blogs, etc.) on popular social media Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
• Multilingual sites--view the Web sites in English or Spanish.