HSLS Update

Health Sciences Unit Web Site Project

The Health Sciences Unit Website Project (HSUWP), introduced last spring, has worked to create a standardized Web site model template to best represent the typical Health Sciences (HS) unit. The project has successfully navigated the first round of customer launches, and is set to begin another summer of development. Examples of HS Web sites developed under this project include the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism <endo.medicine.pitt.edu>, the Department of Immunology <immunology.medicine.pitt.edu>, the Division of General Internal Medicine <dgim.medicine. pitt.edu>, the Department of Ophthalmology <ophthalmology.medicine.pitt.edu>, and the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition <gi.medicine.pitt.edu>.

The HSUW project began as an exercise in organizational integration, bringing together representatives from UPMC Public Relations, the Health Sciences Library System, Office of Research - Health Sciences, and the Center for Biomedical Informatics to develop a functional Web site model template. Through reciprocal links, standardized wording, and a style approved by UPMC Public Relations, the HSUW project committee has eased some of the challenges previously faced by HS units in their independent efforts to serve both academic and clinical missions simultaneously on the Web. Often a unit would choose to emphasize one mission at the expense of the other, or sacrifice both, resulting in variable web site development quality, questionable content choices, and neglected pages.

After one year of planning and development, Web site authoring software was produced. Existing applications were reused from the IAIMS architecture to enhance the final product. This configurable software runs on a relational database with a Web-based user interface that can be used to:

• manage content and content categories
• prepare and maintain individual homepages for faculty, staff, and trainees
• update a links page
• customize homepage content
• post news and events.

All Web sites are housed in a central hosted facility supported by the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor, Health Sciences, Dr. Arthur S. Levine. Personnel time is kept to a minimum, with a departmental Web coordinator serving as the contact within each unit. This alleviates the need to assign technical staff with the responsibility of maintaining the Web site. CBMI staff consisting of a Webmaster, Web programmer, and a project manager launched approximately one dozen sites last summer, and hope to triple that number by the end of summer 2003.

More information on current project activities is available at: <www.health.pitt.edu/it> under ‘IT Projects.’

--Nicholas Soulakis, Webmaster for the Schools of the Health Sciences