Methodist Richardson Medical Center
Methodist Richardson Medical Center
Methodist Richardson Medical Center (MRMC) has offered a broad scope of medical, surgical and behavioral health services to the Richardson Texas community since 1966. MRMC is the first health care facility to receive the Texas Award for Performance Excellence, patterned after the renowned Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and is committed to bringing advanced technology and quality health care to the community.
The Business Innovation
Methodist Regional was not obtaining the results they desired from their external website. Additionally, the cost of maintaining the website was unacceptably high and the performance was starting to degrade. This original external website was built and maintained by a 3rd party organization and MRMC was unable to contribute content directly to the site. Modifications to the website had to be made by the 3rd party and required a costly change request.
Aligning Technology with the Business Needs
To remedy these problems, MRMC made a decision to work with IBM and Ascendant to revamp their external website. Ascendant Technology worked closely with MRMC’s Marketing and IT teams to gather requirements for MRMC’s portal and web content. Once the initial requirements where well understood, Atech worked with MRMC to build a Portal Architecture and Information Architecture to support RRMC long term web presence and SOA strategy. Atech helped MRMC to establish development, staging and production environments including automated data syndication between the servers.
To allow for content updates, Ascendant employed the IBM’s Web Content Manager (WCM) version 6. This product allows the technical staff to create generic templates which the marketing or business users can use to create and update content independently, run it through the appropriate workflows and approvals, and then publish it directly to the Web. Affording a more natural alignment of responsibilities within the organization, the marketing staff can now focus purely on marketing content without having to involve the assistance of the technical staff.
Additionally, MRMC has adopted a Service Oriented Architecture strategy. This strategy will help RRMC align their current and new applications with services provided by the hospital. Methodist Richardson Medical Center, IBM and Ascendant decided to start with WebSphere Portal as the MRMC’s entry point into SOA.
Today, the website is much more stable and has experienced better than 99% success rate. MRMC staff can change the content with out relying on a 3rd party. Its maintenance costs have gone down dramatically and the flexibility of the site is greatly improved. Changes to the content and new content are added on a regular basis. The staff has also been trained to maintain the site and has the ability to do maintenance on the site.
The Resulting Benefits
In addition, by using WebSphere Portal as the base for its Website, Methodist Richardson Medical Center now has the infrastructure in place to create a truly dynamic web presence, In future phases, MRMC is planning to leverage the benefits of its new Service Oriented Architecture by integrating legacy applications into the portal to streamline business processes and create operational efficiencies.
