Checkup: Drupal coming to the Healthcare & Medical Industry
Healthcare, love it or hate it, it's not going away and in fact the healthcare industry is booming and continues to grow. Almost daily we hear about some revolutionary break through in medicine that will help us to lead longer healthier lives. The web has made sharing knowledge and information easier and easier and the emergence of smart phones allows anyone to access years of historical data at their fingertips. The problem is that traditionally this data has been uploaded through systems that are archaic and quickly becoming obsolete thanks to the rapid emergence of open source tools like Drupal.
Over the past few years, we've seen Drupal's adoption in the arts and entertainment industry, government organizations, online publishing, social communities and now healthcare. At LevelTen we have had the opportunity to implement Drupal for numerous healthcare industry clients like: Caris Life Sciences, Health Market Science, Mission Pharmacal and McKesson to name a few. Just like those in other industries, the medical world is starting to realize the speed at which they can deploy new products and brand focused sites utilizing Drupal's intelligent framework.
The healthcare industry is extremely specialized and often times the information can be confusing or overwhelming to the end users. Utilizing Drupal, a website can be easily modified or changed based upon feedback from patients and site visitors, and ultimately continue to make the site better and more user-friendly over time as a result of that feedback. Plus, some of the more advanced features allow for easily sharing related information and content; in the long run those extra tools will equate to a greater visitor return rate and longer website visit times.
Maybe you're considering Drupal for your medical organization; here are just a couple of great points to consider:
- Integration - Drupal has a very sophisticated structure and as such can be tied into almost any applications, applications with a solid API are even easier. The benefit of integration is a universal experience for all of your site users and visitors.
- Customization - Drupal has over 8000 modules (extensions to add functionality) currently available and that list only continues to grow. The benefit speaks for it's self, but the more options available to choose from the faster your site can be deployed, ultimately lowering costs.
- Easy to Update - Drupal is a CMS and a framework both; the CMS portion when combined with the right modules, makes it easy for non-technical staff to update and manage the website.
