Our vision was to disrupt the status quo and stir healthcare providers from their apathy and turn ‘Just live with it’ into ‘I can help you!’ This meant creating more than a website – we needed name recognition – a credible platform to drive meaningful change in the way healthcare providers see and manage IBS.

So we broke the mould and established a unique expert group, seeking out providers from 5 key disciplines, and a patient advocate, to form a diverse collective sharing a passion for managing IBS - The IBS CounSEL. With an identity, determination, and a mission to provide Support, Education and Leadership in the care of IBS, the IBS CounSEL provided the scaffold for a novel online resource, IBSCounSEL.com. An IBS educational website like no other – successfully providing simple, practical tools to help non-specialists treating millions of people with IBS on the front-line.

Once the site map and content strategy was finalised (which was intimately linked to the desired behavioural goals) Complete HealthVizion developed a user interface and user experience suitable for busy clinicians. In parallel, Complete HealthVizion, Allergan and the IBS CounSEL worked together to generate the educational content for the site. Website developers (HighPoint Solutions) brought the site to life, working closely with Complete HealthVizion for thorough quality checks and user experience appraisal.

The sitemap was finalised during March 2016, and a beta version of IBSCounSEL.com was ‘soft-launched’ to gain live feedback during the Digestive Disease Week annual meeting in May 2016. Parallel feedback was also obtained in the beta version of the site via on online survey throughout August 2016. The website was refined ready for the live site launch at the American College of Gastroenterology Annual Scientific Meeting in October 2016. IBSCounSEL.com has been in use ever since.

Since the live launch in October 2016, the site has generated significant traffic via word-of-mouth and personal referrals from the IBS CounSEL members. The site has now exceeded 1300 unique visitors, with more than 10,000 total page views. The diagnostic section of the site has achieved the most interest from users – an encouraging result for a disease which is known to be incorrectly diagnosed.

The feedback (from live events and via the online survey) we have received has been very positive, and comments from IBS CounSEL members using the site for training purposes, have reported the impact it has had with their fellows and students.

Patient advocacy group, the IFFGD agreed the site has great potential to impact the lives of people with IBS. The initiative also has been recognised and reported by several industry commentators such as FiercePharma, BioSpace, PharmaBiz.com and Street Insider.