How Vivantes Unified Its Digital Healthcare Platform with TYPO3

Vivantes - Netzwerk für Gesundheit GmbH is one of Germany's largest publicly funded healthcare providers, based in Berlin. With approximately 20,000 employees and an annual turnover of 1.66 billion Euro, the network operates nine hospitals, 18 nursing homes, more than 80 medical practices, a rehabilitation center, and a hospice. It serves as a critical healthcare pillar for the Berlin population, handling over 100,000 active website users monthly.

Vivantes was operating on an outdated digital infrastructure which failed to meet modern accessibility standards. The website needed to meet WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards and ensure strict GDPR and IT security compliance. Information was fragmented and spread across multiple websites and subdomains, making it more difficult for patients and referrers to find relevant information efficiently. Due to the network’s vast structure including various brands, locations, and decentralized editorial teams, it was in need of a unified technical foundation. 

Vivantes was in search of an agency once their service contract expired. e-pixler GmbH, a full-service agency specializing in complex web projects and technical expertise with TYPO3, won the bid to manage the Vivantes websites in 2022.

With a tight timeline, the project followed an ambitious schedule in January 2025 with a go-live target of January 2026.

e-pixler took a hybrid, agile approach for this relaunch, with a focus on delivering a strategic consolidation. The Vivantes platform had been operating on TYPO3 since 2010 and this relaunch included developing a multisite instance, upgrading to TYPO3 v13.4. The three major websites and various microsites were consolidated into a single platform. 

Developing a user-friendly information architecture was essential to solve the content fragmentation problem. This included a shift from a location-based structure to a patient-centered, theme-based approach (e.g. Who treats what where?).

A major part of the relaunch included a content audit and migration. This process resulted in the streamlining of 8,000 pages to 1,300 high-quality pages optimized for SEO. During the process, the site was prepared for traditional SEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).

e-pixler implemented features such as Solr search with faceted filtering, a recruitment salary calculator, a nursing price calculator, and various integrations tailored to medical pre-assessments (SmED) and waiting room monitoring.

“What we’ve accomplished with e-pixler in such a short time—and at such a high level—is impressive. I’m glad we received support that was so customer-focused, technically sound, and conceptually strong.”  -Sandra Seidenstücker, Team Leader, Online Communications, Corporate Communications – Online Marketing Division

The collaboration between Vivantes and e-pixler resulted in a high-performance web platform with a significantly improved user and editor experience.

The website now meets accessibility requirements and is fully compliant with WCAG 2.2 AA standards. Content management was simplified through a unified backend, and the primary content stands out due to a page count reduction.

Early indicators point to stronger SEO performance, with the new structure and Schema.org markup laying the groundwork for improved rankings and discoverability, both traditional and GEO-readiness for AI/search bots. This was supported by executive insight by Sandra Seidenstücker of Vivantes, who praised the impressive speed of implementation and improvement in technical and conceptual quality.