Website Features

NHS Choices Library

GP Fusion Websites all include the option of an interactive Library, driven by content from NHS Choices, featuring over 10,000 pages of unique NHS-authored content.

Click here to see an example of the GP Fusion Library

Mobile Device Support

Websites provided by GP Fusion have full support for mobile devices via custom style-sheets and mark-up designed specifically for mobile phones.

The Mobile version of each practice website is much simpler, with a focus on delivering the content in an accessible manner.

GP Fusion allows Practices to capture their geographical location, and optionally their practice boundary, using a web-based mapping tool.

The location of the practice is then shown within the Contact Page, along with a tool allowing the visitor to get directions to the practice.

Should a practice have more than one location, the map shows all locations, and the direction-picker allows the user to choose the destination before generating directions.

Surveys

GP Fusion allows Practices to set up an unlimited number of custom Surveys, each having a series of questions which can include:

• Multiple-choice
• Single-choice
• Tick-box
• Free-text

Surveys can be shown on the front-page, linked within any page of the website, and can also be distributed via e-mail to PPG members. Surveys can also be printed, conducted offline, and the results entered via a data-entry mechanism.

Once a survey campaign has been completed, GP Fusion provides a number of reports to provide insight to the responses, along with the facility to export results to Excel.

GP Fusion also supports embedding popular Survey tools within practice websites, including Survey Monkey.

Embeddable Widgets

GP Fusion offers the facility for other websites and applications to easily include content from a GP Practice Website, either by using Widgets, or by consuming the API.

JavaScript widgets allow other web-masters to include content from your Website within their own sites in a single line of code.

Currently a News widget is available, but over the coming months we plan to release a number of widgets, including the ability to embed Surveys and Online Forms from a practice website within other websites.

Many popular sites, such as Facebook and BBC News, make extensive use of Widgets.

GP Practices can elect to disable the widgets feature, which means no other site will be able to embed their content.

Data Export

At any time, all data held within a Practice Website can be exported to a ZIP file, which contains the raw HTML and files / images associated with the site.

This offers practices assurance that there is never any vendor lock-in, and that practices can always get an offline copy of the website contents.

Secure Online Forms

Online forms are a vital part of the GP practice website, allowing patients to communicate with the practice electronically in a managed way.

GP Fusion offers both a number of standard online forms, and the ability for GP practices to set up their own custom online forms, capturing any data they may require.

Secure Forms

In contrast to many online forms offered by website solutions, GP Fusion’s forms are truly secure:

• The forms are secured by HTTPS and SSL, with a 64 bit certificate.
• Our server environment is PCI DSS certified, the highest standard of security associated with e-commerce and online finance solutions.
• No data is stored on the server; all form submissions are sent directly to the practice via e-mail.

Standard Online Forms

The standard forms offered include the following:

1. Book an Appointment.
2. Cancel an Appointment.
3. Change of Address.
4. Patient Registration.
5. Telephone Consultation Request.
6. Update Clinical Record.

The forms include helpful hints, validation to ensure correct details are provided, helper icons and much more.

Custom Forms

GP practices can create as many custom forms as required. A custom form can contain any combination of items including sections, text boxes, drop-down lists and more.

Making a custom form is very easy, and only takes a matter of minutes.

Fully Integrated

The forms are fully integrated within the GP practice website.

Unlike many other web solutions, though the visitor is taken to the secure HTTPS Portal, the experience is as if the visitor is still on the practice website.

Clinical System Integration

A module due for release in June 2011 will provide an automated mechanism for importing online form submissions into clinical systems via a standard messaging format.

 

 

Syndication

Syndication describes an exciting field in web technology, whereby publishers make content available in a number of electronic formats, and this content can be consumed by other websites and platforms.

GP Fusion takes advantage of both publishing and consuming syndicated content.

Publishing Content

An RSS feed is a way of publishing news that can be easily understood by a computer. RSS feeds are very popular, and many web users now subscribe to RSS feeds of their favourite web-sites. Many popular sites such as Twitter, BBC News and NHS Choices make extensive use of RSS.

All practice websites will automatically get two RSS feeds – one for the whole website, and a second feed for just the news portion of the website. You can see examples of RSS feeds below:

1. GP Fusion RSS Feed - whole website
2. GP Fusion RSS Feed - news only

You'll also notice the icon in the browser bar - this lets users know the site has an RSS feed.

GP Fusion's RSS feed is self-updating, so the GP practice doesn't have any additional administrative burden.

Syndicating Content

GP Fusion provides the facility to syndicate RSS feeds from other websites on the front page of each practice website. This feature is very powerful, as it gives the front page of the site a ‘pulse’, and means your practice website always has new information on the front page.

If a GP practice has a presence on either Twitter or Facebook, the RSS feed syndication tool can be used to show updates.

Some of our adopting practices have included the following feeds:

• BBC News
• NHS Choices - Behind the News
• Health Service Journal.

Social Networking

GP Fusion has the ability to include a number of social networking and aggregation site links on each page.

The buttons on the social networking toolbar allow website visitors to quickly post links about the practice to sites such as Facebook and Twitter. So if, for example, a news story was published of interest to a particular demographic, a visitor may post a link to their Facebook profile.

Using social networking links is also a way of increasing your website's ranking in search engines. Many search engine providers rank their results by counting the number of links to your website from other high-ranking websites. Allowing users to easily link to you site using these social networking features will therefore increase the number of links to your site from other popular sites, improving your ranking in search engines such as Google and Bing in the process.

 

Content Management

At the heart of GP Fusion there is a highly sophisticated Content Management System (CMS).

Each practice website is split into a number of areas:

1. Home
2. Content Managed Pages
3. Do it Online
4. Contact Us
5. Standard pages (search, site-map, disclaimer, RSS feeds, and more).

The GP practice is in complete control of the content-managed area, and can add as many pages as desired.

Every effort has been made to ensure the process of managing the content is as simple as possible, yet offers the flexibility required for a truly custom practice website. We believe that GP Fusion is unparalleled in its simplicity and ease of use.

The content management system offers a number of powerful features:

1. Very simple to use. No training required.
2. Pages can be added in a matter of seconds.
3. Pages can include text, images, videos and links. All editing is done by a simple, intuitive WYSIWYG editor.
4. 'Draft' and 'Publish' modes, so you can save changes without showing them on the public site.
5. Full version control - we always save every revision of a page. So, if a mistake is made, it's easy to go back to an old version.
6. 'Jargon Buster' - medical key-words are automatically highlighted, and an explanation is shown when the user hovers. For example, hover over the following word: [ Meningitis ].
7. Content from your practice's NHS Choices Profile can be automatically imported in a single click, and will display correctly.
8. For advanced users, the HTML of a page can be edited directly, if required.
9. Automatic translation via Google Translate to 40+ supported languages.
10. All pages can be printed or exported to PDF. To see this in action, click on the links at the bottom of this page.
11. Your whole website can, at any time, be exported to a ZIP archive which contains one HTML file for each page of the site, and all files / images that have been uploaded.

This page, and indeed the entire site, were created and are hosted within the GP Fusion Content Management module. This is a testmony to the power and flexibility of the solution.

Multiple Site Support

We understand that many GP practices are affiliated with other nearby surgeries and need to communicate clearly with patients of all sites. 

If a practice shares medical staff and services across more than one physical location and would like to host all information within a single website, GP Fusion can display more than one set of practice contact details and show multiple practice locations on a map of the local area.

Alternatively, if each location requires its own website, we would be happy to set up a 'landing page', providing details of all relevant locations, and links through to the appropriate websites.

 

Templates and Themes

GP Fusion offers a large number of templates and themes from which to choose. Please refer to the Media Gallery for examples of images and videos.

There are over 100 templates available, and we're adding new themes on a weekly basis. Custom designs can be easily accommodated upon request.

If required, practices can also upload their own logo which will be shown instead of the plain text in the top right of your site.

Practices can change the appearance of their site at any time in a single button click.

GP Fusion offers a large number of templates and themes from which a practice can choose. Please refer to the Media Gallery for examples of images, and videos.

There are over 100 templates available, and we're adding new themes on a weekly basis. Custom designs can be easily accomodated on request.

If required, practices can also upload their own logo, to be shown instead of the plain text.

Practices can change the appearance of their site at any time in a single button click.

Clinical System Links

GP Fusion currently provides support for automatic generation of a page linking through to the following clinical systems:

• Vision Online Services.
• SystmOnline.
• EMIS Access.

We're very happy to accomodate support of other Clinical Systems as required - please talk to us about any specific requirements that you may have.

Clinical System Integration

A module due for release in June 2011 will provide an automated mechanism for importing online form submissions into clinical systems via a standard messaging format (HL7).

Accessibility

All websites hosted in GP Fusion are fully compliant with the prevalent online standards, including:

• W3C Guidelines.
• AA accessibility.
• AAA accessibility.
• Screen-reader compatibility (e.g. JAWS).
• Mobile device compatibility.

In addition, a number of innovative accessibility features are offered.

Print this Page

All content-managed pages on the website can be printed.

Keyboard Shortcuts

GP Fusion automatically generates keyboard shortcuts for the navigation of each website. You'll notice that the navigation links at the top of this page, and on the left hand side, have letters underlined. Each of those letters corresponds to a single-click keyboard shortcut. Try it out now by clicking 'I' to go to the Introduction Page.

Easy-to-remember URLs

All pages on the site have easy-to-remember URLs. For example, the address of this page is:
https://www.gpfusion.co.uk/web/website-features

Having human-readable URLs offers many benefits, including:

• Website visitors can easily share links;
• Links to specific pages could be included on printed literature, such as practice leaflets;
• Search engines such as Google favour short, simple URLs..

Computer Speech

All content-managed pages within GP Fusion websites have a 'Listen' link, which, when clicked, will stream the page contents as an MP3. You'll be able to see this link at the bottom of this page - why not try it?

Search Engine Friendly

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) refers to a collection of techniques, methods and approaches used to ensure a website receives a high ranking in search engine results such as those of Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo.

GP Fusion employs a number of techniques to ensure all websites hosted within the platform are ranked highly in searches. A selection of these techniques are outlined below.

High Quality Website

The single most important factor in a website receiving a high search-engine ranking is that it contains high-quality, relevant content. GP Fusion ensures this is the case by providing a large amount of content out-of-the-box, including standard articles, the ability to include data from NHS Choices Profiles, and much more.

Clean HTML and CSS

Search Engines only care about content - not appearance. GP Fusion ensures that all content and appearance are clearly separated, with the HTML containing only content, with CSS controlling all appearance. This ensures search engines are able to find what's important, meaning the practice website is better indexed.

Appropriate Page Titles

All pages within GP Fusion websites automatically have titles that reflect both the page purpose, and the name of the practice. Titles are one of the most important factors in search-engine placement and click-through.

Automatic Site-map Generation

A site-map is a document describing all pages within a website, used to tell both visitors and Search Engines about the pages contained within. GP Fusion automatically generates both a HTML and XML site-map, ensuring search-engines are aware of all pages in a site, and are able to include them on results.

Social Networking Links

GP Fusion promotes the use of social networking links, encouraging visitors to post links on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. This encourages inbound links, which are one of the most important factors in receiving a high search-engine ranking.

Human-readable URLs

All pages on the site have easy-to-remember URLs. For example, the address of this page is:
https://www.gpfusion.co.uk/features/search-engine-friendly

It is a belief held by many that search-engines favour easy-to-read URLs, though this is a point of contention amongst many experts. However, they are still worth using for a large number of reasons beyond SEO.

Fast page loading times

Search engines favour pages that load quickly. GP Fusion uses a wide range of techniques to ensure pages load as quickly as possible - including sprite-based images, caching, cloud storage, merging of external includes, server load-balancing, and more.

Redirection from your old practice website

If you're considering using GP Fusion but your practice already has an existing website, we are happy to analyse your old site and configure URL Mappings, pointing the old web page addresses to the most relevant pages on your new site. This ensures that any existing search-engine placement is retained with your new site.

RSS Feeds

All websites hosted within GP Fusion have RSS feeds created automatically. These feeds will be indexed by search-engines.

Practice News

GP Fusion provides the ability for practices to publish news stories to the website.

These stories appear in number of places – you can see examples of each by clicking the links below:

1. On the front-page of the practice website.
2. On the news page of the practice website.
3. In the RSS feed[s] (see 'Syndication' for more information).
4. In the 'search' results.

News stories can contain text, images, videos and links.

The news module also benefits from the advanced features offered by GP Fusion, such as the Jargon Buster, Social Networking Links, Search, and more.

 

Integrated Search

Each website hosted by GP Fusion has its own search engine, which can be used by visitors to look for content in your practice website.

The search engine is sophisticated, and includes support for mis-spelled words, predictive text, and much more. When users click through to the results, the matching key-words on the destination page are highlighted.

Why not try it out?

• Type 'GP Fusion' in the search box at the top of the site, and click 'Search'.
• Alternatively, follow this link to search for 'GP Fusion'.

The Reporting module provides a summary of the key words visitors to your practice website are searching for.

Jargon Buster

GP Fusion features an online 'Jargon Buster'. This is a tool which highlights key words and offers an explanation when the user hovers over them.

We maintain a comprehensive taxonomy of keywords relevant to NHS Websites. Some examples are below - hover over the words to see the Jargon Buster in action.

[ BMA ]
[ Benchmarking ]
[ BMJ ]
[ Health Inequalities ]
[ Choose and Book ]
[ Department of Health ]
[ Community Care ]
[ PCT ]
[ Caldicott Guardian ]
[ Cushings ]

The Jargon Buster is compatible with the majority of Modern Browsers dating back to 2001. Should a browser not support it, the website still behaves correctly.

Speech Support

Accessibility is of paramount importance within the GP Fusion platform.

In addition to full compliance with the prevalent online standards, GP Fusion websites offer a number of innovative accessibility features. These include full speech support, whereby all articles within your practice website can be automatically and immediately converted into speech.

The ability to read your website's content out to your visitors will make your site easier to use for large numbers of people, including those with literacy problems, learning difficulties, dyslexia and visual impairments.

Special Pages

The Special Pages feature of GP Fusion allows the automatic creation of a large number of pages. These fall into two categories - Data Driven, and Standard Content.

'Data Driven' Special Pages

Some of the special pages are Data Driven, which means they are created automatically from data you've provided - such as Practice Staff, or Opening Hours.

GP Fusion provides facilities to capture certain information in a structured way, similar to that of the NHS Choices Profile. This information can then be used to automatically create a page to show the information in a well-organised, visually appealing way.

Currently the following data-driven special pages are supported:

• Practice Staff
• Opening Hours
• Facilities
• Services and Clinics

'Standard Content' Special Pages

Standard Content special pages are stock articles available within GP Fusion. These articles have been prepared by our copywriting team.

It takes a matter of seconds to create a new page in your practice website featuring one of these articles, which you can then adapt to your needs. Your phone number, practice name, etc. will be inserted automatically

The current list of standard content pages includes, but is not limited to:

• Introduction
• What people think of us
• Policies
• How do I > Access my Medical Records?
• How do I > Order a Prescription?
• How do I > Make an Appointment?
• How do I > Get help in an emergency?
• How do I > Get test results?
• How do I > Register with the practice?
• How do I > Provide feedback?
• How do I > Request a telephone Consultation?
• How do I > Request a home visit?
• How do I > Keep healthy?
• How do I > Obtain a sickness certificate?
• Our Services - Vaccination Schedule.
• Our Services - Travel Information.
• Our Services - Non-NHS Services.
• Our Services - PALS.

Reporting

GP Fusion hosts a number of simple yet powerful reports, allowing you to quickly see trends such as:

• Which pages are popular;
• How visitors are finding your website;
• Popular search terms;
• Website traffic;
• % return visitors.

Reports can be viewed on-screen, or exported to Adobe PDF and Microsoft Word formats. In addition, facilities are available to send regular e-mail reports on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Should advanced reporting functionality be required, GP Fusion supports integration with Google Analytics, a free and market-leading solution providing highly sophisticated analysis of website traffic and activity. We are very happy to set up Google Analytics on behalf of a practice website, if it is required.