Coming to a Tablet or Phone Near You…

After several months of research and planning, on April 22 the ABIM Foundation launched a new version of the Choosing Wisely® website. The updates and improvements were designed to bolster the campaign’s continued momentum.

In late 2011 the original ChoosingWisely.org website was launched with little content or fanfare. That all changed on April 4, 2012 when the first nine medical societies announced their lists of things to question, garnering widespread national news coverage and driving more than 60,000 visits to the site in 24 hours.

As the campaign has grown to encompass more than 70 medical societies and 400 recommendations, so has the content and traffic to the website. More than a million visitors a year come to www.choosingwisely.org for information on what tests and treatments are right for them and resources to help them engage in these important conversations.

The widespread adoption of Choosing Wisely has prompted the ABIM Foundation to take a critical look at the role of the website and how it can be improved to better serve clinicians and patients.

The new site features a number of significant improvements, perhaps the most important being mobile and tablet-friendly versions. Recognizing nearly half of all traffic to the website comes via mobile or tablet devices, the new designs will make it even easier for clinicians to access more than 400 specialty society recommendations when they need them most—at the point of care.

We received several emails and comments that the growing library of recommendations was difficult to navigate. In the new site clinicians can find specific recommendations through an improved search functionality. Recommendations can be found through searching by keyword and/or filtering by:

• society;
• topic area;
• adult, geriatric or pediatric; and,
• inpatient or outpatient.

The “Lists of Things Physicians and Patients Should Question” have also been broken out into individual recommendations, making it easier for clinicians to get the exact information they need without having to scroll through additional content, as well as share them via direct links in an email or tweet.

The site also features pathways to help clinicians and patients easily find information relevant to their situation. Under the patient pathway, users can search for resources by type of procedure and age group.

“Over the course of three years, the Choosing Wisely campaign has grown exponentially. With over 400 recommendations from over 70 partners, we found ourselves outgrowing the site we started with,” said Daniel Wolfson, EVP and CEO of the ABIM Foundation, about the need to redesign the website. “We also recognized the need for physicians to be able to access the individual recommendations quickly and easily, at the time they are determining a plan of care with their patients. The new website responds to this need and reflects the next step of the campaign itself—implementation.”