The Royal Ottawa Health Care Group Digital Experience

The Royal had to rely on a third-party contractor to make critical website updates.

Unified

three distinct websites

Modular

and composable design architecture

Autonomously

working in unison

View Website

Industry

Healthcare

Technology Partners

Drupal

Solutions

Accessibility and Auditing

Digital Experience Platform (DXP) Implementation

User Experience (UX) Research and Planning

Need to Know

Northern helped Royal unify three separate websites into one comprehensive digital experience.
The Royal’s newsroom section incorporates automated subscription management for media releases and newsletters.
The website’s content is date-stamped and easily kept up-to-date with a flexible workflow system that provides default content lifecycle states.
Staff now manage its website through secure sign-on sections.
The website’s call-to-action items create encouraging event and donation participation.

Client

The Royal Ottawa Health Care Group (Royal) is one of Canada’s foremost mental health care, teaching, and research hospitals.

Brief

Royal’s legacy WordPress website required a third-party contractor to update and change its page structure and design elements, restricting employees from quickly accessing and editing content.

Left

Challenge

Royal’s site was a combination of three core sections, for the hospitals (The Royal Ottawa and Brockville), another for Research, and a third for The Royal Foundation. The Royal sought to offer a variety of interactive content through a simple, visually appealing interface that is patient and family-centric, allowing its team more control over content administration.

Mobile phone displaying events from The Royal.

Right

Strategy

Northern worked with Royal to complete a content audit and review, which informed the new site’s information architecture and helped the client prioritize critical information for its users. The new Drupal site is bilingual, fully responsive, and guided by simplified, user-focused navigation that allows patients and caregivers to quickly and intuitively find the information they need. A prominent link to Crisis Lines in the secondary menu helps individuals in crisis access mental health services. Users can easily search the site through its powerful Apache Solr search integration. The new site features the Layout Builder module for simplified, branded page creation and custom-templated pages for News and Events items.

Left

Results

The Royal’s goal was to bring together the hospital, foundation, and research under one web roof. Each organization has its mission and administration; however, one website serves them all. The site has a consistent navigation system and secure sign-in for hospital admin, its Foundation, and board members.

Royal’s brand is aligned; content is under one umbrella and uses the same CMS templates and design. Modular content blocks make critical (and previously duplicated) content shareable, like success stories, testimonials, and news items highlighting fundraising success. Departments continue to work autonomously, but the site remains unified.