A new coat of paint

<em>Healthcare IT News</em> gets a new look.
By Chip Means
12:04 AM

Welcome to the revamped Healthcare IT News. We've given our website a top-to-bottom design upgrade, adding, altering and reorganizing many features along the way.

Since we relaunched Healthcare IT News on the Drupal content management system in January 2009, we've learned a lot about the ways our readers use the site. We've experimented with the gamut of "Web 2.0" add-ons and content delivery methods, and some have been incredibly popular. Some others were ... well, at least we gave them a shot. More than anything, this experimentation, coupled with ongoing performance analysis, has allowed us to identify which features are most relevant to you, the daily readers of our news and resources.

This new presentation of Healthcare IT News is as much about functionality and content relevancy as it is about aesthetics and layout. Jeff Marion, our senior project manager, and Jessica Loranger, our senior graphic designer, worked tirelessly to optimize the performance and appearance of our editorial staff's Neal Award-winning content. The result is a website and mobile site designed to cement Healthcare IT News as your daily destination for all the most relevant news, analysis and discussions surrounding the healthcare IT industry.

Here's a rundown of some of the changes we've made:

  • Must Reads: We'll place breaking news, special content features and industry announcements in this new slider built into our sitewide header. To browse through the contents of this slider, just click the arrows at either side.
  • Topic-based navigation: We've reorganized our site menus to prioritize topics, allowing you to browse our content based on the topics most relevant to your interests. Click any topic in this menu and you'll arrive at a Healthcare IT Index entry, providing quick access to all the news, blogs, resources and new media filed under that topic.
  • Daily news feature: Each day, we'll be highlighting a single news story as our daily feature. And don't worry - you can scroll back through the last few days to access important content you may have missed.
  • Trending Now: This auto-scrolling section showcases editor-selected content sourced from Twitter. We're bringing the industry's most buzz-worthy Twitter content right into our homepage, giving you a quick-hit look at what's happening across an array of people and publications.
  • Enhanced video: We've expanded the presence of our video content on the site with a new player that combines a high-resolution presentation with a sidebar playlist of the next videos in the queue. Head to the Videos page for even more players, complete with topical sorting.
  • Commenting by Disqus: Our articles and blogs will benefit from your feedback more than ever with the introduction of Disqus to our pages. Those new to the service will find it extremely easy to add a comment for the first time, while anyone familiar with Disqus can log in with their existing account.
  • Improved white paper and webinar researching: Find the resource content that's most valuable to your organization with greater ease now that you can browse by topic and company. Visit the white papers listings to see the new layout.

Web redesign is work that's never complete. We'll continue our practice of iterative feature development and experimentation, and I know changes will come before the next overhaul. But today I'm confident we've arrived at a design and user experience that best serves our daily readership.

As always, please contact me with your feedback and questions, and thanks for reading.

Email: chip.means@medtechmedia.com
Twitter: @chipmedia

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