Southampton City PCT overhauls web services

Southampton City Primary Care Trust have announced a new version of its website that it hopes will better engage both staff and the 240,000 residents in its reach.

The new web portal, which is run over EasySite content management software, is the first stage of a plan to renew web services across the PCT. According to EIBS, the manufacturers of the system, it will allow even members of staff with no experience of web development to easily update the content.

Southampton PCT hopes that the site will become a starting point for local people when they are looking for health information. In order to develop that, they are planning to give individual primary care service providers their own microsites.

"The next step for the trust is to create a community of websites," said Sarah Reed, website editor for the PCT. "GPs, dentist and opticians can create and maintain their own website, each with a distinct design and domain name."

A new intranet has also been set up, accessible to all sites in the PCT. "The new website has moved away from being a purely informative site to one that offers its visitors and staff the opportunity to get involved through signing up to the mailing list, or sharing their thoughts and ideas through the discussion forum," said Reed.

The back end of the site also allows each individual page to be tagged and coded for retrieval and public access according to its status under the Freedom of Information Act. It also features a document library where images and files can be shared across trust sites.

The site is also compliant with W3C accessibility guidelines, and has low graphic versions and easily-resizable text.

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Southampton City Primary Care Trust