Overview

The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation dedicated to improving the U.S. healthcare system by supporting and publishing independent research. Over the past several years, The Fund’s website had expanded to feature over 6,000 articles, surveys, charts and maps. By 2008, the site had outgrown its content management system, and it was too cumbersome for staff to effectively update. Velir recommended Sitecore CMS for its scalability, stability, and security.

Commonwealth’s goal was to keep the site’s front-end design and user interface consistent, while switching out the back-end programming and production tools. Sitecore made this easy by employing strict separation between content and presentation. New features included functional redesigns to the Innovations, ChartCart and Snapshots sections. Search, RSS, user login/profiles, and related content modules were rebuilt and the HTML/CSS code was rewritten to look the same, but be more standards compliant.

The resulting website was a resounding success: user experience remained high, while the reengineering allowed staff members to quickly and easily update and maintain the content and data, and compose e-newsletters from the same interface.

During phase 2, Velir's Datacenter platform was integrated with Sitecore to publish national and international health data. The 2009 State Scorecard compares data from all U.S. states on 32 different health indicators, and the International Health Policy Center features statistics from 13 other countries. Data is viewable through maps, in tables, and in bar charts, and visitors can share or download as PDFs, PPTs, or excel spreadsheets.