Published on 2009-11-19

New EEBA website

During the last years the EEBA committee board noticed a decreasing resonance within the Association, and this although there seemed to be tendencies and requests for more information and education. It also became more obvious to the Committee board that the role and workload of the EEBA administrator has been growing constantly and that there need to be new tools created which would make his work more easier and efficient.

Also the fact that the technology of our technical conditions of current EEBA website are no more on par with the real needs of today contemporary websites, lead us to the decision to create and update the EEBA website.

It is obvious that a new website will generate increased costs thus and therefore general approval was requested during last business session at the EEBA 2009 congress in Amsterdam in combination with an increase of annual EEBA membership fee to € 90,00 (previous fees € 40,00).
Thank to the generosity of 2008 and 2009 EEBA congress organizers the current costs for the new website have almost been covered, and the higher increased membership fees can now be used for the maintenance of new website and future new projects.

The first initial ideas, concept and structure of new EEBA website has already been realized and implemented, although the development of the new website became more and more complex during the whole project.
With the goal of creating a more interactive design website, the individual EEBA members will need to take more own responsibility and will be requested to correct and update their own personal data and as well the data of that eye bank.

The One important goal of the modifications is possibility to generate automated routine procedures, like the payments and tracking of annual membership fees and the collection of annual statistical data for the yearly Directory. This necessitated the development of an elaborate, secured data base system working in the background of the new website.

Also much emphasis was placed on the simplification and streamlining of administrative tasks. These tasks should be also practicable for people with less IT background.

Also the parts where interactive participation by individual EEBA members is requested, needed to be structured in simple and clear terms, so that the members will be encouraged to use this functionality.

Of course, these new options would require as well a high level of data protection and the generation of separate website sections for sensitive data areas (Members area / MyEEBA).

Each different section (clinicians, scientists and technicians) within the Members area will have a moderator who will supervise the inserted information/data by the EEBA members, as well as answering their questions and forward requests to special interest groups etc. These moderators will initially be selected by the EEBA Committee, but should later be replaced routinely by volunteerary individual members.

The clear structure should enable for easy orientation and help to find location of important News and Guidelines (Minimum medical standards, Technical guidelines etc.)  and should offer necessary background information for the routine work within every eye bank (INFOPOOL with links to EU directive, other associations etc.).
It also should assist in the sharing of knowledge and information, and to facilitate into contact with other eye bankers, colleagues and friends (EEBA Directory & country profiles).

The website for the annual EEBA meetings, which previously was set up individually by each Organizer, will now be an integral part of the main EEBA website, which should be a great help for future organizers and participants.

Of course this new EEBA website will 'live' only with the help and fruitful active
participation of its individual members.

We hope that we have developed with this new website a great tool to facilitate more activity and information exchange amongst the members.

We are anxious to receive your feedback (www.europeaneyebanks.org).

Any recommendations and/or suggestions for improvement are more than welcomed.

Andrea Gareiss-Lok

Website Administrator