New FDA Website Launching This Weekend
After three years in the works, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Friday that later this weekend it will begin the launch of a redesigned, more customer-centric website at FDA.gov.“Monday will be the official launch date, but you will begin to see the new site beginning this weekend as we bring it online in phases. We expect the new site to be fully live on Monday, April 29,” an agency spokesperson told Focus via email.
The new FDA website, which the agency said receives nearly five million visitors each month, will provide the public with health and safety information that is easier to locate and navigate. The spokeperson noted that between approximately 30,000 pages to 40,000 files make up the redesigned FDA.gov site.
"Most URLs will change. Automatic redirects will be established, but users should update their bookmarks," the spokesperson added.
In addition to helping the public make more informed decisions quickly, the site includes federal regulations, recall information, safety alerts and other regulatory actions.
“The redesigned FDA website will also provide more visuals and interactive content. It will also be more mobile responsive, important because more than 50 percent of visitors to FDA.gov come from mobile devices. Additionally, the FDA is making necessary changes to make it easier to find content using third party search engines,” the spokesperson said.
As far as the biggest challenges of rebuilding the site, FDA pointed to: "the identification of the required content types to structure the content; the development and completion of the required metadata fields for each piece of content; the migration of content into the new content management system; and the migration to a cloud hosting environment."
Acting FDA Commissioner Ned Sharpless previously announced the launch of the new site last week.