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Due to spam attacks I had to password protect editing. The password is the web standard you use to define the presentation of a web site (in uppercase).

Egton Medical Information Systems

EMIS (Egton Medical Information Systems) is one of the United Kindom's largest suppliers of I.T. software and hardware to the NHS. Founded in the late 1980s by two General Practitioners from Yorkshire, it has grown to have a market share of over 50 percent of UK doctors. EMIS moved into the Canadian healthcare market with a new division called EMIS Canada in 2006.

When a request was made to the web team in early 2006 to develop a website for the new Canadian division, it was obvious that the use of web standards would be an important part of the development. The EMIS websites at the time were old-school table layouts, and were increasingly difficult to maintain. To reduce page size, allow for easier development and editing, and take advantage of more modern trends in website design the entire site was built using CSS and XHTML 1.0 Strict on a custom-written content management system.

This proved to be a good move, as a rebranding of the site just a few months later could be completed with little more than some changes to the site CSS files. What could have been a major development exercise was simplified greatly by the centralisation of the site presentation through the use of CSS.

Following this it became apparent that the main EMIS website was in need of rewriting. The main goals were to make it easier to manage and update, implementation of new and updated features, and to reduce the file size for each page to remove the need for extra bandwidth investment during times of heavy usage.

The content management system from the EMIS Canada website was employed, and the site rewritten using XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS. The old page content was transferred across into the new website, cleaning out any incorrect or redundant markup, and the site launched on 17th November 2006.

The main goals for the site were all met. Thanks to the custom-written content management system different shareholders throughout the organisation could update parts of the website through a standard interface, which validated all syntax used and forced confirmation to the W 3 C? XHTML standard. Users could enjoy a cleaner, quicker-loading site with average file sizes down from over 25kB to under 12kB. This eliminated extra charges for site bandwidth during the times when the site was most heavily used.

Many new features were rolled out for the site launch, all of which benefited from the use of site-wide standards-based templates. For example, the secure download area uses the same template files as the main site, greatly simplifying site-wide modifications.