The Berlin-based Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) was founded in 2004 to improve the quality of patient care in Germany. The in-dependent institute uses two different channels to provide information about the advantages and disadvantages of various examination and treatment methods: The iqwig.de website is aimed at healthcare professionals and stakeholders, while gesundheitsinformation.de acts as a contact point for citizens. Over the course of an overhaul, both sites have now been reworked in terms of content, visuals and technology. An additional objective was to enable a significant re-duction in the effort required for the creation, maintenance and administration of the websites, which were previously operated using different content manage-ment systems. The overall project was managed by the IT service provider adesso.
The adesso services at a glance
Content and visuals relaunch including SEO optimisation
Experts from the adesso Digital Experience (DX) business area developed a new design and structure for IQWiG’s two websites. In addition to effi-ciently addressing the different target groups, the institute placed partic-ular emphasis on the sites’ accessibility. Extensive SEO measures were also implemented in order to prevent a drop in the Google search en-gine ranking following the relaunch.
Introduction of a new content management system (CMS):
The existing CMS solutions were consolidated in the FirstSpirit system from adesso subsidiary e-Spirit, with data and content being wholly mi-grated to the new system. FirstSpirit manages website content using page containers, which can in turn contain further structured content containers. Each container is based on a template that bundles the vali-dation-enabled user form and the template source text for each output channel – including a special one for summarising search results. The IQWiG editors are thereby able to easily and quickly implement new pages, landing pages or microsites on current topics. Using the UX-Bridge expansion module, they are also able to dynamically publish edi-torial changes on the web server.
Conversion to a cloud environment:
IQWiG moved the infrastructure for the new websites to the cloud. The adesso subsidiary adesso mobile solutions GmbH migrated the existing data and content onto the FirstSpirit cloud and made technical adjustments. At the same time, this adesso unit is responsible for hosting.
Service and support:
Individual services during the project phase as well as ongoing operation ensure that the IQWiG team is relieved of var-ious tasks and can concentrate on its core business. e-Spirit support takes care of any hosting questions and software problems. The adesso experts were on hand to help during the launch within the framework of an application management contract.
Workshops and training:
adesso also supported the project through offering numerous workshops and training sessions. This ran through the initial conception phase which included the development of a new user experience, SEO consulting, data migration, UXB consulting, con-tent definition and determination of permissions to general FirstSpirit training and a customised user manual.
“IQWiG received an all-round package from us, meaning that the institute hard-ly had to worry about anything,” says Stefan Herbst, project manager at adesso. “That included the provision of software with customised features, technical implementation and data migration as well as the hosting of the cloud environment, but also the design and training. The flexible, multiple possibilities of content usage ensures large-scale time and cost savings. What’s more, the new CMS solution makes the IQWiG independent of central IT.”