Health Informatics Career Framework (HICF) website
The Health Informatics Career Framework (HICF) provides national job roles and information for careers within Health Informatics. Following the development of the standards and qualifications in 2008 and 2009, Christie and Christie were asked by NHS Wales and NHS Connecting for Health to develop a website that would deliver the career framework to the health and social care sector.
Requirements for the new system
Some of the key requirements for the HICF website were:
- A database driven system with both a public facing front-end and a Content Management System (CMS) for designated staff
- The need for users to be able to find job roles using a variety of methods
- The need for the website to have a landing page featuring a graphical representation of career progression within the framework
- A user friendly workforce planning tool that would generate a 'careers snapshot' of an organisation's workforce
Developing the new system
As the content of the career framework had already been developed, the client was clear about their requirements for the website at the beginning of the project.
After setting up the server web space and domain name for the prototype, the architecture for the HICF database was planned against the career structure of the HICF. Christie and Christie Ltd then developed the prototype Content Management System (CMS) for the website and populated it with HICF job roles, career level and career discipline data.
Once the development of the CMS prototype was complete, we began to develop the Application Programming Interface (API) layer that would deliver the requirements of the public website. Four methods were developed to allow users to find job roles including a job role search, finding job roles alphabetically, by career framework level and by discipline. The workforce planning tool was then developed using the PHP GD Library allowing the site to dynamically generate a 'careers snapshot' image based on user input. All other web pages, information and links were then included before finally creating the landing page for the public prototype.
Having developed and tested all technical requirements for the system, the client then asked us to develop a logo and branding solution to represent the HICF. The final branding was based on a colour spectrum representing the 9 levels of the career framework with octagonal blocks indicating career progression. This branding was then applied to the global page template used by the website.
'Go live'
Due to NHS Wales' comprehensive specification for the technical requirements of the site, we were able to develop the solution within 2 months and the site went live in March 2009.
The HICF can be accessed by visiting http://www.hicf.org.uk.