Work

Overview

Wisconsin Diagnostic Laboratories (WDL) is a premier provider of diagnostic lab services in Wisconsin covering consultative pathology, chemistry, cytology, hematology, microbiology, molecular genetic profiling and a full service blood bank that services the Medical College of Wisconsin / Froedtert Hospitals. WDL performs 5 million tests annually and has test capabilities that match the largest labs in the world. 

WDL needed a website that detailed their offerings and services, but they also needed to show the level of service through a strong, detailed and brand-strong website. They also needed a series of databases and data source API builds to integrate outside data like tests and locations.

Process

There are multiple audiences for a diagnostic lab, the providers, hospital admins, billing and insurance companies, smaller medical practices that need lab services, and, of course, the patients themselves. Providers are a fully different audience by themselves as they have zero time and little patience to wade through obsequious interfaces or read descriptive text.

Most medical sites we've built have a very difficult time creating or organizing content for a non-technical audience. Working with WDL was an interesting case even more so because much of the content was going to be unknown until very close to going live. We had to approximate and then rethink content strategy after the site was actually produced, making substantial changes as we went live. 

Tooling

WDL has patient service centers throughout the state where phlebotomists draw blood and collect samples. We needed to have a dynamic map to allow administrators to update locations, hours and other meta information and have the changes immediately available on the site. Patients need to be able to find the best location based on the tests they're being sent.

The site also includes a detailed list of WDL pathologists with filtering by specialty, and lists of research and publications for each pathologist. Each pathologist has meta information like subject specialties, areas of interest, schooling and board certifications.

Lagniappe

We were also asked to create a temporary test directory and search system, and we worked with the IT department who had no idea how or if it was possible to even get a data export from which to import. When it comes to data and APIs, Byte has a plethora of skill and experience getting at any kind of data. We built a system in three days by scraping an antiquated Internet Explorer-only portal site, and had it live before the IT folks decided that it was impossible to export.