University Medical Center Utrecht

The University Medical Center Utrecht is the main hospital and medical research center of the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. With more than 12,000+ employees and 1,000 beds, they aim to take healthcare further, with the guiding principle: “Together, we create the care of tomorrow.”

This focus not only applies to in-person health services, but also to the digital space. For UMCU’s digital team, being patient-first and future-ready was a key driver in choosing Kontent.ai. As their flexible, secure content management system (CMS) of choice, Kontent.ai integrated seamlessly into their tech ecosystem including Microsoft Bot Framework, ReadSpeaker, DeepL, Matomo, and Productboard.

The team set out to improve the digital patient experience while also streamlining their way of working. This required a fresh approach to managing digital content.

The challenge of siloed operations 

A major challenge in healthcare digital transformation is breaking down content silos. UMCU saw this as a priority. The team maintained siloed operations for websites, patient portals, print materials, and email outreach. Considering they currently run 94 websites with 30 million web requests monthly, this was a cumbersome process.

For the team, maintaining everything separately took a lot of time and resources. This meant there was less time to deliver on innovation to improve external patient touchpoints. For a smaller team, time was something they couldn’t continue trading.

Content consistency was also a key concern. Especially in healthcare, information must be accurate, up to date, and easily accessible. If a patient’s experience feels disconnected, it can hurt their trust in the platform. To fix this, UMCU worked on improving how they deliver content across different channels while automating processes wherever possible.

Serving content from a single hub

At the heart of the project was a simple idea: patients should be in control. UMCU aimed to give them 24/7 access to clear, relevant information on their preferred channels. This patient-first approach shaped every part of their website, patient portal, and chatbot experiences.

UMCU turned to data to identify patterns of patient engagement, understanding what was useful and usable on the current patient journey. User journey mapping and heat map analysis helped them make the right call when developing personalized healthcare paths. 

To support patients on their preferred channels, UMCU needed to unify content and simplify internal workflows. Kontent.ai made this possible from both a business and technical perspective. Structuring content in the CMS allowed teams to easily update and publish information across all platforms while the centralized authoring hub made collaboration more efficient.

“We use Kontent.ai as a central source of content for editors. From here, we refer to other systems, such as HiX patient portal. The increase in efficiency by using a central source for content is one of the growth measurements that we have aimed at the organization,” said Kirsten Goede, Product Owner Digital Experience at at UMC Utrecht. “In addition, patient information can easily be offered digitally, making it more relevant and up to date.”

To achieve what they set out to do, automation also played a role in their success. With Kontent.ai’s Software-as-a-Service model, the team benefited from seamless updates and reliable backups.

Putting patient feedback front and center

Patient-centricity means delivering the right information at the right time—not overwhelming patients, but ensuring they have what they need. UMCU redesigned their websites, patient portal, chatbot experiences, and narrowcasting strategies with this goal in mind. A small but impactful improvement? No more anonymous caller IDs when reaching patients—a simple change that added a human touch.

Additionally, patient feedback is now directly integrated into the content workflow. With an embedded custom element, authors receive real-time feedback on specific content pieces, enabling quick adjustments for clarity and relevance.

The central source of truth they have created in Kontent.ai not only allows them to serve and support patients, but also eases labor-intensive internal processes. A win for everyone involved.