Member Article

Made in Sheffield website brings breath of fresh air to European Lung Foundation

The European Lung Foundation (ELF) has launched a new website with expert help from Sheffield-based digital agency Rckt.

The site was recently unveiled to 20,000 delegates at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona, one of the largest worldwide conferences for respiratory science and medicine.

Lung diseases are still one of the world’s biggest killers, causing around one sixth of all deaths worldwide and costing more than €380bn in Europe alone for primary care, hospital treatment and lost productivity.

Communicating with a broad, international audience that includes patients, health professionals and European Ministers, in eight different languages, was a key basis of the website brief.

Pippa Powell, head of ELF, said: “Due to the complexity of lung diseases themselves and the geographical coverage of the organisation, the ELF website is large, multilingual and complicated.

“Working with Rckt to update and revitalise our old site was fantastic. They taught us to look at the site from the users’ perspective and to really think about our target audience.

“This has led to the development of a website that is fresh, functional, interactive and easy to use.”

Andy Barratt, principal of Rckt, said: “Having faced the challenges of asthma from a young age I have first hand appreciation of the difficulties faced by those with lung conditions.

“It’s the work of ELF, their peers and colleagues that can make a huge difference towards all those who suffer and can actively raise awareness and bring about change.

“The team and myself were really eager to support their work as much as possible.

“We were able and willing to reduce our fees significantly in light of the cause; we feel our work will make a real difference to ELF and their audience.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Mark Lane .