About InEK GmbH
The Institut für das Entgeltsystem im Krankenhaus (InEK GmbH) was set up as a public utility company on 10th May 2001 by the umbrella organisations of health insurance companies, the Association of Private Health Insurers and the German Hospital Association.

The institute supports these contractual partners, and the bodies they set up, in the introduction and on-going development of the system of accounting and charging for in-patient hospital services statutorily required by the GKV modernisation law.


Initial Situation
The 2001 InEK GmbH website has been continually updated with new documents and other information so that, by the time of reorganisation in 2007, an extensive structure, several archives and a large number of pages have made clarity and accessibility more difficult.
Furthermore, maintenance of the content had become inconvenient and, according to the degree of updating required, demanded a long period of re-familiarisation and content verification.
From a current perspective, the technical basis displayed deficiencies in availability, since certain end devices were not supported in the respect of barrier-free accessibility and alternative display possibilities for people with restricted access.


Project/ Goal Setting
The focus of the website reorganisation lay in future accessibility to the content and optimisation of page maintenance.
Both the internal stipulations of the institute and the legal requirements for a barrier-free realisation of online content were to be met by the website’s structure and display features.

The basic idea of a barrier-free web presence is to provide the best possible access to the whole information for all users – irrespective of their physical and/or technical possibilities. For example, care must be taken that the functionality of the internet pages is guaranteed even when greatly enlarged, that graphic information is also available in text format and that texts of links are so chosen that they can still be understood even when out of context.

For these reasons, physically or mentally restricted people should be offered alternative possibilities for viewing as well as support for technical aids such a Braille readers. The level 1 requirements of the W3C guidelines were chosen to provide concrete quality control of barrier-free access.
It should be possible to carry out content maintenance independent of location (MEDIATA or InEK) that can still be efficiently individualised to meet future requirements.

Multilingual localisation (German, English and French) was also agreed upon due to the institute’s international cooperation. The simple possibility for portioning in further languages should also be taken into account in this respect.


Implementation/Realisation
Implementation was undertaken on the basis of the Enterprise Content Management System eZ Publish, which met the requirements of both administration and modes of display, as well as the requirements for managing numerous types of documents. The modular structure and object-oriented programming guaranteed the possibility for expansion and maintenance in future.
In addition, exclusively linearised content structures were used that result in a sensible sequence even when no format details are given. And so it is possible, for example, for the blind and people with impaired sight to have the content displayed through a line of Braille or read out by a screen reader.
The requirement for various display possibilities and a meaningful representation of contents was achieved through a rigorous separation of content and design elements and a well-thought-out template concept.

Automatic presentation for various target groups and end devices thereby became possible for content that need to be embedded only once. With the application of current XHTML and CSS web standards, the Content Management System eZ Publish offered an optimal basis for barrier-free internet pages and utilities. The global UTF-8 font ensured display independent of language, so that not only western European but also Asian and other language areas could be realised according to need.

In addition, the InEK website was given an optimised and simplified design that improved the accentuation and readability of the content, but nevertheless reflected corporate design requirements.

Clear-cut navigation, simple contact possibilities and further aids such as the scaling of type size, also increased both the clarity and accessibility of the internet pages.
The ECMS was also bound to the Zend platform to optimise usage reliability and thereby user satisfaction.
The Zend platform is a professional PHP application server that provides functionality features, which help to ensure that PHP applications run reliably and at the highest possible level of performance. The high-performance file download mechanism and caching features implemented as part of the InEK web presence deserve special mention.


Advantages and Consideration of Results
The realisation of the InEK Website represents an investment in the technologies of the future, for barrier-free websites are accessible to almost all users – independent of whether they wish to access the sites from mobile devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs MDAs or on-board vehicle computers, or use assistive technologies.
The information provided on the internet can thereby be reached as widely as possible and the communication platform successfully used by the groups wishing to do so.


About MEDIATA Communications GmbH
The core business of MEDIATA Communications GmbH is the development, programming, and support of internet applications. MEDIATA Communications GmbH offers the wide range of services provided by a full-service internet agency.

From eCommerce, to website development, to online marketing. Our services and software solutions are based on combining IT competence with knowledge of business management.

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