Croatian Institute for Emergency Medicine
Croatian Institute for Emergency Medicine
Client: Croatian Institute of Emergency Medicine
Category: WordPress, Public Sector/Health
Technology: WordPress, PHP, HTML/CSS, JavaScript
About the client:
The Croatian Institute of Emergency Medicine (HZHM) is a national institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health that coordinates and supervises the entire emergency medicine system in the Republic of Croatia. The Institute's scope of work is extremely broad — it includes outpatient and hospital emergency medical services, helicopter emergency medical services, maritime emergency assistance, telemedicine, and professional education and training of healthcare professionals. It is an institution on which human lives literally depend in crisis situations, which sets a high standard for quality, reliability, and clarity of communication.
Integration: calendar of events
Role and process:
We took on the development of a complete WordPress site, from setting up the content architecture to final implementation and handover to the client. The project required close collaboration with the client's team to understand all content categories, user needs, and legal obligations.
Training calendar:
One of the central functional requirements was the implementation of a calendar of training and professional events. HZHM regularly organizes training exercises, lectures, webinars and professional meetings intended for healthcare professionals throughout Croatia. The calendar was implemented in a way that allows a clear overview of upcoming and past events, simple filtering by category and type of training, and intuitive content management by the client's team without technical knowledge. The goal was for healthcare professionals to always have a clear overview of available forms of professional development in one place.
Digital Accessibility (WCAG)
A special and technically demanding segment of the project was the implementation of digital accessibility in accordance with the WCAG guidelines, which are a legal obligation for public institutions in Croatia. This included semantically correct HTML throughout the entire page, appropriate color contrast between text and background, full keyboard navigability without relying on the mouse, implementation of ARIA tags for screen readers and other assistive technologies, proper labeling of forms and interactive elements, and text alternatives for all visual content. Accessibility was not treated as an afterthought, but as an integral part of the development from the very beginning — which is the only way to truly consistently apply the standards throughout the project.
Content architecture and CMS
HZHM has an extremely complex content structure that includes news and announcements, projects co-financed by EU funds, publications and expert guidelines, legal regulations and forms, contacts of all county institutes, telemedicine services and much more. All of this had to be organized into a clear navigation structure that allows users of different profiles — from emergency doctors to the average citizen — to quickly find relevant information. In parallel, the CMS was set up so that the client's team could independently and without technical support update all content categories, publish news and add new events to the calendar.
Multilingualism
The site is implemented with support for Croatian and English, which is important for international cooperation and EU projects that HZHM is actively implementing.
About the client:
The Croatian Institute of Emergency Medicine (HZHM) is a national institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health that coordinates and supervises the entire emergency medicine system in the Republic of Croatia. The Institute's scope of work is extremely broad — it includes outpatient and hospital emergency medical services, helicopter emergency medical services, maritime emergency assistance, telemedicine, and professional education and training of healthcare professionals. It is an institution on which human lives literally depend in crisis situations, which sets a high standard for quality, reliability, and clarity of communication.
Challenges
The biggest challenge of this project was the combination of complexity and responsibility. On the one hand, the information architecture of the site is one of the most complex that can be encountered on a WordPress project in the public sector — dozens of content categories, multilingualism, dynamic calendar, project integration. On the other hand, the requirements of digital accessibility left no room for compromise — every element of the interface had to be technically sound and accessible to all users, including people with disabilities.
An additional challenge was the nature of the client — a public institution with an established visual identity and strict communication standards, where every detail must reflect the trust and professionalism that citizens rightly expect from it.
Result
A functional, accessible and visually consistent WordPress website was delivered, which today serves as the primary digital service of the Croatian Institute of Emergency Medicine. The website meets the legal obligations of digital accessibility for the public sector, provides healthcare professionals with a centralized overview of educational content and events, and citizens with a clear and reliable source of information about the emergency medicine system in Croatia.