Duke University Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center

Presenting an Engaging and Informative Experience for Medical Innovators

Founded in 1937, The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center is one of the country’s preeminent programs for brain research and treatment. The Brain Tumor Center, operated within the Duke Cancer Institute, is dedicated to providing patients with outstanding care while continuing to pursue lifesaving research and innovative new therapies. 

The Brain Tumor Center approached us with a vision of an informative site with a clear organizational strategy. With this in mind, we created a website that showcases the Center’s variety of content and integrates seamlessly with other Duke technologies. 

 

An Enduring Relationship

Through our work in higher education website design, we’ve been lucky enough to partner with the Duke University Hospital System on a number of other projects. In many ways, this project was a nice continuation of the sites that we’ve created for the Duke Cancer Institute, Duke Psychiatry, and the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute.

As a part of the Duke family, it was important for The Brain Tumor Center to have a website that could connect with university systems and utilize Duke’s tools effectively. We tackled this by building integrations for APIs like Scholars@Duke and Events@Duke, all while ensuring that the programs could work together to provide the information that visitors might need. 

Prioritizing Information

The site itself strongly reflects the Center’s mission of providing unparalleled research and educational resources. Beginning on the homepage, these goals are emphasized through the use of clear dropdown menus, prominent buttons, and frequent references to the Center’s driving principles. 

The interior of the site carries through the theme of organization by including a sidebar that directs visitors towards research initiatives, the Center’s clinical team, and options for obtaining a referral to the practice. This information is supported by detailed content pages, high quality images, and relevant data from clinical trials. 

Because the Center is a non-profit, it was also essential for the site to include a space for potential donors. Our experience in non-profit website design helped us to advise the client on best practices for structuring this portion of the site in a way that will appeal to casual visitors and passionate supporters alike.

Future Impact

Considering the Center’s active research and regularly updated “Stories” section, we built the site on a custom Drupal setup that will allow administrators to add and edit content as needed. The new site has already seen the publication of new data, inspirational stories, and research breakthroughs.