Optimal Solutions for Hospital Websites

Many patients today access the Internet for comprehensive hospital information and hospital selection. Yet medical expertise is not the only selection criterion for those seeking medical help. Excellent care, additional services, trust, and an appealing atmosphere in a clinic also play a role. In the competition among hospitals, the question is how a clinic should ideally present itself on the Web. What requirements must hospital Websites fulfil, and how can clinic staff find the best solutions for meeting those requirements? In this paper, we discuss our work on a Website project that was based on strategic concepts of requirements elicitation, requirements analysis and requirements negotiation. A Website for a group of clinics near Frankfurt, Germany was the result. It now includes around 1,800 Web documents on the Internet and Intranet, to which nearly 80 editors at different locations are connected. We explain the elicitation method used, the special features of negotiation, problems that occurred while creating the site and the solutions found for them, and the domain-specific social and cultural factors involved