Information Resources & Technology (IRT)–

Stanford Medicine Web Policies and Design Standards

1. Terms of Use

2. URLs

3. Site Development and Hosting

4. Design Standards

5. Privacy and Security

6. eCommerce

7. Copyrights

8. Advertisements

9. Legal Liability

1. Terms of Use

  1. Stanford Terms: All Stanford Medicine sites, wikis and blogs are governed by the Stanford Terms of Use policy for online conduct. IRT as hosting agent for Stanford Medicine has the right to remove material from any site, wiki or blog, block access, or take other action with respect to the material, although it is under no obligation to do so.
  2. Computer Users: As a user of a University server, you are expected to adhere to Stanford's Computer Usage Policies (PDF).
  3. Purpose: All sites hosted by IRT must serve an official purpose.

2. URLs

  1. Hosting: All official units of the School of Medicine (SoM) and Stanford Hospital & Clinics (SHC) must use hosting provided by, or approved by IRT for the school, or by Marketing & Communications for the hospital. Please do not attempt to establish independent hosting, commercial or private, of school resources or information under .com or .org domains.
  2. Exemptions: If you feel a particular site should be hosted differently, please contact Mark Trenchard, Director of Web and New Media Services.
  3. For Print: Do not commit a particular URL to use in print unless you have confirmed that it is currently published and operational (best) or that it can be made available to you by press time (second-best); contact Web Help to find out about URLs you wish to create in advance, and allow 2 or more weeks of lead time.

3. Site Development & Hosting

  1. Review: All sites must be reviewed by IRT prior to launch. It is the sole discretion of IRT and the Web Advisory Committee what content can and cannot be hosted.
  2. Maintenance: Each site must have an assigned person for maintenance and updating the content of that site. IRT should be notified who this person is and when a change occurs.
  3. Contacts: Contact information must be prominently displayed on each site. At least one contact email address is required and (ideally) phone numbers and mailing addresses should be included.
  4. Active Server Development: Hosting of client-developed Web applications such as CGI, PERL, ASP, JSP, PHP, Java, etc.are not permitted on IRT's servers, although IRT provides many such applications and processes. If you need hosting for a web application, please submit a Web Help request before committing resources to development.
  5. Software & Access: The use of Dreamweaver or Contribute are required for editing all sites in the standard Stanford Medicine format. WebDAV is the required method for accessing static Web sites for editing. FTP is not available.
  6. Inactivity: All sites must be reviewed, and updated as necessary, at least every three months to update outdated and inaccurate information. Neglected or out-of-date sites may be removed from the server.
  7. Content: Site content should be professional and informative; placeholder content ("coming soon") is discouraged; contact Web Help if you need advice on pre-staging new content. See the Content Development Guide for more information.

4. Design Standards

  1. Basis: To increase the usability of the School's websites, the Executive Committee has provided design standards for all departments, divisions, centers, and institutes within the School of Medicine.
  2. Flexibility: These design standards are intentionally flexible to accommodate unique online identies for individual units when desired, and have now been extended to all adult Stanford Medicine entities. The standards provide a coordinated identity and navigation scheme school-wide and create a logical experience for users as they traverse our various sites.
  3. Customization: By default, all official units of the School and SHC must use the standard templates. If your group would like to develop a unique design, IRT must be involved in the process to insure your site will fit in with the overall online presence for Stanford Medicine. Contact Web Help to learn more.
  4. Reverse-engineering: Is not allowed. Do not attempt to set up the Stanford Medicine format on your own server without first consulting with IRT. For your own protection, do not break pages hosted by IRT out of the templates provided by IRT or attempt to modify locked code.
  5. Faculty Labs: Sites for individual faculty or research labs are exempt from the standard formatting requirement. All other standards apply.
  6. Accessibility: Sites should follow accessibility guidelines, as laid out by the World Wide Web Consortium.

5. Privacy and Security

  1. HIPAA Legal Standard: Content authors are responsible for insuring that information published on Stanford Medicine sites and other electronic communication tools does not violate HIPAA or FERPA requirements. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) contains standards and rules which govern the treatment of individually identifiable health information. Under no circumstances should health information about a patient — whether being treated at the Stanford University Medical Center or elsewhere — be disclosed without express written consent from the patient or his or her guardian. See the University's online HIPAA resources for more information.

  2. Obligations of Site Operators: Reasonable measures must be taken to protect the security of pages that contain protected health information. In general this means that access to these pages needs to be tightly controlled and the content must be deliverd via SSL encryption.

  3. Public Sites: Therefore, no Protected Health Information (PHI) should be stored or served from any public Stanford Medicine sites hosted by IRT. Contact Web Help if you need to store, serve or share PHI.
  4. Email: Do not collect PHI from your site via email form or regular email, as regular email is not secure; to collect PHI via form, see Surveyor.
  5. Photo releases: Secure written consent from individuals not affiliated with Stanford whose pictures appear in your site, wiki or blog. In most cases, the school's general release form will suffice. However, whenever personal medical information is disclosed, the individual (or their guardian) must sign the school's HIPAA release form.
    1. Stanford students, faculty and staff -- No release required but please ask for verbal permission
    2. Family, friends, anyone in the community -- Basic photo release.
    3. Any person who identifying health information is disclosed -- HIPAA release. Note: this applies to individuals treated at the Stanford University Medical Center AND elsewhere.
    4. Download consent forms: General Photo Release and HIPAA Release

6. eCommerce

  1. Stanford Administration: All Stanford eCommerce (financial transactions via Web page) is required to use the official Stanford process. See the University ecommerce policy in the Admin Guide for details. Stanford has contracted with an internet commerce transaction services vendor to handle the authorization and management of electronic orders. This arrangement allows the University to:
    1. Consistently require the vendor to take necessary and reasonable steps to ensure that transactions are secure,
    2. Assure appropriate integration with University financial systems,
    3. Ensure that parties comply with Stanford name use and privacy policies,
    4. Use tested emergency response and recovery procedures,
    5. Leverage University transactions to reduce costs, and
    6. Provide current technology and support for developing applications.
  2. Documentation: Stanford eCommerce is documented on the Stanford Financials site. To request assistance with this service, file a HelpSU request with the Stanford eCommerce support team

7. Copyrights

  1. Site owners and operators are responsible for copyright compliance on their sites. All copyrighted information (text, images, icons, programs, video, audio, etc.) must be used in conformance with applicable copyright and other law. Copied material must be properly attributed. Plagiarism of digital information is subject to the same sanctions as apply to plagiarism in any other media.

8. Advertisements

  1. In general, the School's electronic communication facilities should not be used to transmit commercial or personal advertisements, solicitations or promotions.
  2. Services and products offered by Stanford Medicine business entities are exempted

9. Legal Liability

  1. All content authors are legally responsible for their commentary. Individuals can be held personally liable for any commentary deemed to be defamatory, obscene, proprietary or libelous.

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