VMS engage directly with health professionals

Integrating Community software with CMS

VMS had a bespoke CMS which was inefficient at creating new pages and was becoming difficult to manage. VMS turned to Lightmaker, an interactive agency, with whom they had previously worked, to take over the design of the templates and cascading stylesheets and through their advice VMS selected EPiServer.

"EPiServer is the only CMS that could also deliver a community on the same CMS platform," says Maarten Willemse, Webmaster at VMS Veiligheidsprogramma. "Our timescales for getting everything live had been shortened but in deploying EPiServer we were confident we wouldn't have to slip our deadline."

Involving all healtcare stakeholders

The community is being developed for healthcare professionals to share knowledge, experience and best practises with others. Its appeal is that it is a professional network, involving all healthcare stakeholders such as hospital administrators, doctors and nurses.

EPiServer platform is affordable for small organizations

"I'm also aware that we would have completely overspent our budget if we had chosen another CMS as we would have had to do a lot of bespoke customization on a separate community product." says Maarten Willemse

"Indeed, EPiServer is affordable for small organizations such as ours, whereas most of its competitors appeal to large enterprises. Yet we feel we are getting an enterprise quality CMS at a price we can afford. " He continues, "As a government funded healthcare advice site we also had to take accessibility into account and with EPiServer we have built a fully compliant site."

Single sign-on an obvious benefit for users

One of the most obvious benefits for users is that they only need to sign on to the site once. For example, a user may register for a seminar on high-risk medication and then decide they'd like to contribute to a forum on how to implement a safety management system in a clinic. Using single sign-on, the user can seamlessly switch from one activity to the other. "It's likely we will add a couple more applications and a user will be able to access content determined on their profile," says Maarten.

Number of visitors has grown 300 percent

Over 10 months the number of visitors to the site has grown 300 percent, and over the switchover month (to the new site) the figure is 127 percent, just for September/ October. The number of pages visited has grown by 185 percent.

Integration for mail and events

Early in 2010, VMS users will be able to register for events using EventX, an EPiServer module built to ease administrative tasks when dealing with user registrations for events such as conferences and seminars. "Our editors will be able to create registration forms using XForms, inserting EventX Dynamic Content controls in EPiServer," says Maarten, "We shall also be able to create newsletters using EPiServer Mail.

Promoting health and safety for patients by reaching healthcare professionals

VMS is the national patient safety agency for the Netherlands. They support the Dutch hospitals in creating a safe environment for patients by promoting procedures and directives. For example, when a person undergoes surgery the operating theater doors must not be opened more than a particular number of times, so VMS advises that counters should be fitted to the doors.

Many personnel working in the health sector will go to the website to download guides and best practice policies. VMS also provide education in the form of seminar, e-learning programs and conferences.