A new website was launched last month by the Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS), a U.S. based oral and maxillofacial surgeons group, MyOMS.org. The press release for the website launch is located over at http://myoms.org/assets/uploads/documents/myoms.org_website_news_release.pdf and titled Web site Gives Patients New Insight into Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. It was known several months ago that a new website was coming, see the post Upcoming Changes to JOMS and AAOMS in 2014.
The website is described in the press release as easy to navigate and designed to allow the public access to vital information on conditions of the face, mouth, and jaw. The press release also describes how videos and illustrations explain many of the procedures offered. Furthermore, a Find a Surgeon feature allows patients to find oral surgeons near where they live or work.
Reviewing the website, the design is definitely different from before and is fresh and modern. The Find a Surgeon feature has been present on the old AAOMS.org site for many years but it seems to just have had a new interface added and moved to MyOMS.org. Much of the content appearing on MyOMS.org seems to have just been migrated to the new site and format from the old AAOMS.org site. There is now a link for wisdom teeth management which provides information on wisdom teeth and says wisdom teeth may not need to be extracted but should be monitored regularly for any changes. A large orange box says the worst thing to do is to ignore your wisdom teeth. A few other paragraphs are provided on wisdom teeth and then a link on the side goes to a more expanded ebook on the topic. Most of this information was provided before on the old AAOMS.org site but some of it appears to have been modified/re-written. One thing that does seem to be newer to me is the discussion of how oral bacteria can travel through your bloodstream and potentially lead to systemic infections.
Another feature that is new to MyOMS.org is the tagline for AAOMS which now says “oral and maxillofacial surgeons: the experts in face, mouth, and jaw surgery.” I feel this tagline better suits them than the old one “saving faces, changing lives,” although they used the latter on their press release so it is not clear what they will use on official letterhead in the future.
Overall I think the concept of the new website was a good idea, but I don’t really like the final product. My main complaint is the size of the font and text on the site is much larger than what I see on other sites, so depending on your screen resolution, the site may not fit that well on the screen. I think the site overall looks fresh and modern, but the large text and not fitting well on the screen is an issue which detracts from the experience for me as it makes it more difficult to navigate. So I am not sure what resolution the designers had in mind.