A curated publishing platform for doctors and physicians.
Interventional Radiology Procedures is a program developed by a team of doctors and physicians at the University of Alberta. It’s goal was to create a series of templates that could be used to attract accredited authors to write and peer review articles that summarize medical procedures in the IR field.
The program originally started by using MS Word document templates, and having an admin pass the document off for review before submitting to a web-developer to add onto the website.
The Challenge
Manually tracking word documents and hiring a developer to publish the approved articles was a time-consuming task that limited what could be done. In addition, the previous website was very limiting in what it could display. As a result, very few authors were willing to contribute, and managing authors, reviewers, and updates was a daunting task.
The Solution
Our goals involved automating the review process, the templating process, the writing process and the publishing process. In addition, we looked for for ways to simplify the overall look and appeal of the articles and website by focusing on Readability, Information Architecture, and best design practices for a heavy-text based website.
We built a custom web application that handles the complete publishing process online, including administration, invitation of authors, the template creation process, the article writing process, and review/publication process.
The system also has reporting that automatically sends out reminders when an article needs to be reviewed again (after an 18-month expiry) to ensure articles are always kept up to date. In addition to the back-end of the site, we designed and developed a front end using a PHP build that ties into the back-end API.
Results that matter.
The launch of the project garnered interest from doctors and physicians around the globe. With the new publishing application in place, and a front-end design that is intuitive and easy to navigate on all devices, the team has made a strong effort to bring in new authors and reviewers to create new articles.
