Barnabas Health had initially hired an outside firm to create their mobile site. However, less than a month after it was released they asked me to reverse engineer the look and feel and recreate it. The reason for this is that there were several key features that were missing and the company had not followed the specs. The key thing which was completely unusable and had to be turned off in the initial release was the Physician Search. A physician can have up to four offices in the Barnabas Health database – but the mobile development company only allowed searching on one office. In addition, the search did not utilize geocoding, but instead only city/zipcode. When the system went live, doctors were furious because their office may be just across the street from a particular city border or zipcode but would not show up in the results.
In addition to fixing many of the problems with the initial release of the mobile site, I was able to also incorporate additional functionality – such as the list of specialties, publications, subscribe to newsletters, Google Maps, Directions, etc.
This is the “Find a Physician†screen. This allows a person to search for a physician using a number of criteria including number of miles within a particular zipcode.
After the user performs a search, the list of doctors will appear.
Clicking on a doctor’s name will bring up that particular physician’s page.
The physician detail page also includes a Google Map of the physician’s office locations.
Clicking on the map marker will bring up the infobox. This provides all the information for that office as well as an input box to enter an address to get directions from or the visitor can choose to click on the “Get Directions from Current Location†button.
Once the user chooses to get directions, the Google directions Map is shown and a “Directions” section is dynamically added to the page which allows the user to show or hide it.
Under the map are the written directions.
Additional physician information can be shown or hidden through the use of an accordion that slides information in and out of view.
The Locations page was pretty much the only thing that was functional that the mobile company had created although it was enhanced to provide the user with additional information.
When the visitor clicks on a facility name, the associated detail page is displayed.
One of the things I added was the ability to search on Outpatient Services and see what facilities offered these services.
When the visitor clicks on a facility – it displays that facility’s detail page.
In addition I added the ability to get more information on Specialty Services.
When the visitor clicks on the specialty – the associated detail page is displayed.
There are actually two “Request an Appointment†forms on the mobile site. One is general and the other is for a specific doctor which can be found on the physician detail page.
I had also added the Publications page. Prior to working on the mobile site, Barnabas Health had asked me if I could find a program that would convert their Publications that are in PDF format into a dynamic web publication. I found E-Page Creator that is very easy to use and allows them to easily create a desktop version and a mobile version of the publication.
