Background
The National Quality Center is a non-profit organization whose mission is to help improve the quality of medical care delivered to HIV/AIDS patients around the country through training, seminars and the dissemination of quality improvement information to healthcare professionals. NQC is funded by the New York State Department of Health.
The Problem
Despite their important mission, NQC had no website. Another non-profit had given them a small amount of real estate on a page, but NQC did not have direct control over that content. In addition, they needed a website with unique, customized applications geared specifically to servicing NQC’s professional healthcare audience.
The other issue was they had a non-profit’s budget, so they needed a solution that would give them maximum value for their investment.
The Solution
Webworld offered NQC a solution centered on a flexible and inexpensive web content manager - the single-user version of the Webworld Content Manager (WCM). The WCM, designed both for ease-of-use, is a component-based system that was developed with customization in mind, so it would be relatively easy to customize to meet NQC’s unique requirements.
NQC had already worked out the desired look-and-feel for the website, but there were many requirements that still needed to be worked out. These details were mainly in the areas of information design (how the information on the site is presented to visitors) and functional requirements (what web applications are needed and how should visitors access them).
Webworld guided and worked closely with the NQC stakeholders to flesh out the needed details to ensure that once Webworld constructed the website NQC would be happy with the result. Once the requirements were nailed down, mockups of the main website pages and application screens were created and presented to NQC for feedback.
“It is crucial in any development project that the client get an opportunity to see what the various pages of a website or screens of a web application will look like before any real programming is begun,” explained Alex Jones, programmer manager for the NQC project. “This avoids expensive and time-consuming changes later in the process, and ensures that the client gets exactly what they need and want.”
Jones noted that another factor in the development process is the difficulty that people typically have in articulating their requirements. “Once we presented NQC with mockups of their pages based on their initial requirements, it became clear to them the small and large changes they needed to make. Without actually seeing these dummy pages, it would have been very difficult for them to explain to us exactly – down to small details – what they wanted.”
Once NQC was pleased with the dummy pages, the development team customized the Webworld Content Manager to meet NQC’s requirements and also developed the new web applications that would be needed to bring the website to life. These included a document search application that would enable healthcare professionals to easily search for and locate needed quality-related resources and a forum that would allow healthcare professionals to help one another by sharing ideas.
At each step of the way, Webworld provided NQC stakeholders with access to the website and its various applications and made revisions based on their feedback. The final result is a rich information website that has a number of outstanding features including:
- Innovative search functions that healthcare professionals can use to locate needed resources on quality improvement;
- A library of multi-media learning modules that can be accessed at the visitor’s convenience 24/7;
- Automatically rotating artwork created by HIV-positive artists;
- Easy-to-use web content management solution.
Project Website: www.nationalqualitycenter.org
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