NHS | Shared infrastructure and website build

Project overview
Omni Digital worked with Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Groups, now BNSSG CCG’s to produce a lightning fast, accessible, feature rich and shared system. It included websites, consultation apps and communication tools to the same level as the fantastic gov.uk site.

Our solution
From the start of the relationship, we respected the fact that the NHS holds a special place in British society – but a quick glance at many NHS systems, software and applications at the time would suggest that the options available to it were not meeting its unique needs. We decided that a new approach would be required – and Omni, BNSSG and the SCWCSU decided to build a suite of tools where the underlying codebase was shared.

Omni made sure that the core codebase was maintained as its own clearly defined entity, and that all feature requests are either included in the core development workstream, or were created as modules, which can be installed on a per-site basis. Over time, this resulted in significant cost savings for each site, as security updates and new core features could be installed on each instance without any specific development costs incurred in making the patch relevant for multiple codebases. 

To achieve this, we first had to establish a principle whereby if one partner paid for the development of a piece of functionality, and Omni built that functionality into its own app, the resultant app would be available to all other members of the partnership simply for the fees incurred in deployment, configuration and training. Where possible, we looked to combine feature requests from multiple partners to further reduce and share the cost of development.

Design, UX and accessibility
One of the challenges with this relationship was meeting the NHS’ branding requirements, ensuring also that design considerations for one system did not affect the others, without at any stage compromising on accessibility.

The design was forward-thinking and utilised the then in early development NHS transformational brand guidelines, now being seen rolled out across the NHS. This default design was clean and clear – we nicknamed it ‘clinical’, and it allows for per-site customisations and overrides i.e. colour changes, alternative logos and social feeds etc. Crucially, it puts content and patients’ needs first, and is quick to load and easy to navigate.

The user experience has always been focussed towards simplicity and ease of use. A search box is featured prominently, and an overall information architecture is enforced to ensure that the user is able to find what they need quickly – regardless of whether they are a conscious visitor to one of the partner sites, or have been directed to one from a search engine. Given the NHS’ target user groups’ needs, this is critical to real human wellbeing.

Accessibility, of course, has been a continuous process of development, content writing and editing, and evaluation. The site was built leaning towards gov.uk’s suggestion that real users were more important than a simple check-box approach to accessibility, and as such during the build phase Omni tested prototypes on members of the public with special requirements.

Since launch, the site went through two separate re-audits, covering both content as well as code, first with a blind accessibility consultant, and the second through an accessibility audit professional. As we would expect, both audits provided valuable insight into how we could better police content, and highlighted new techniques and considerations which we could release into the shared codebase.