Background

The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest NHS teaching Trusts in the country. It provides a wide range of general and specialist clinical services and is a base for medical education, training and research.

The first proposals to build a hospital for Oxford were made in 1758 at a meeting of the Radcliffe Trustees, who administered the estate of Dr John Radcliffe (1650-1714), physician to Queen Anne. The sum of £4000 was released for the new hospital, which was constructed on land given by Thomas Rowney, MP for Oxford 1722-1759.

Nowadays the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust treats over 500,000 outpatients and over 100,000 inpatients, and has emergency departments that see over 125,000 people.

The Trust has over 100 departments and wards spread across its four hospitals and satellite clinics, providing high quality general hospital services for the local population in Oxfordshire and neighbouring counties, and more specialist services for patients from a wide geographic area.

The Challenge

Since the new website was seen as a vital element in building public awareness for the full scope and depth of their services, Oxford Radcliffe decided to engage the services of our professional services team to work in partnership with them on the implementation.

The brief was to create a manageable solution which re-identified their profile and positioned Oxford Radcliffe as the provider of choice both for patients and staff through outstanding clinical and customer-focused patient care. Success would be measured by a quality comparison against the best Acute Trust websites and it was essential that the developed solution certainly rivalled and preferably exceeded these existing standards.

Look and Feel

Having worked on a number of NHS projects, we have developed an in-depth understanding of the surrounding issues. Whilst each project has been unique, there are nonetheless common points of similarity, the understanding of which, through successive projects, means that we can help our NHS clients realise their goals more effectively. 

The first consideration was the development of a professional, welcoming and dynamic 'shop window' for the Trust and its many services. The identity had to be distinctive whilst maintaining a recognisably NHS identity. This work would define their corporate image and help set the house style for future projects, whilst still reflecting NHS guidelines with regard to design, usability and accessibility.

Considering the wide range of stakeholders and their varying web experience, it was essential that the user journey be made as simple and intuitive as possible with navigation mechanisms providing multiple routes to information.