NHS: Eastern SDE

The Eastern Secure Data Environment (SDE) is part of the NHS and works with researchers, private companies and other NHS organisations that have a legitimate need to access health data for research, product development and service improvement.

They came to Jambi because their existing website was no longer working for them. It was difficult to manage, time-consuming to update and made some important internal processes far harder than they needed to be. Something we’ve seen a load of times before and we were thrilled to offer the full range of our skills and experience.

We started with our tried and tested first question: what do you actually want to do? We worked with the lovely Eastern team to figure that out. They needed a website that accurately reflected how they could help people and organisations with genuinely vital services and data, and it needed to be easy to manage and not a burden to the team. No worries.

Being part of the NHS there were also a bunch of things they needed to do. For example, as part of its commitment to transparency, the Eastern SDE needs to show how NHS data is being used across approved projects it’s involved in. Previously, keeping this information up to date on the website was a difficult and heavily manual process.

We worked with NHS technical teams to develop a solution that allows the website to pull project information directly from their existing data source. That means important information can be presented clearly to the public without creating another system the internal team needs to maintain separately. And it only needed to be controlled from a single source.

The site also needed to work better as a marketing and communication platform. The Eastern SDE produces a large amount of content for researchers, healthcare organisations and the public, so giving the team more flexibility and control was a major part of the project.

As we’ve done many times before, we created a bespoke and flexible WordPress site that made use of reusable components, straightforward field layouts, and easy to use colour scheme selectors. This is all wrapped up in a site with a clear structure that both human and AI audiences can understand easily.

Full service

Prior to building the bespoke WordPress site we also handled the full site designs. This started life as a set of wireframes we created so the team could get a feel for the site before we commit too much time and energy into the aesthetics of the site.

The site’s dress code was dictated by the NHS brand guidelines which we ensured were all adhered to during the design phase.

The NHS brand guidelines are quite interesting to work with. Though they may be seen as creatively restrictively, perhaps not unfairly, the communication clout that the brand has is something that organisations the world over wish they could have. How many other organisations can you recognise with a single colour and Arial typography?

To inject a little more life and creativity into the aesthetics we did add some subtle animations, iconography, and various colour scheme options (all included in the guidelines, promise!) to give the site some life.

We also made sure that the site was fully compliant to WCAG AA accessibility standards too. This is made a little easier when following the guidelines, however we did find that one of the NHS colours used a background colour failed accessibility contrast standards for both black and white text, which was quite surprising!

The site was delivered in full, on time, and within budget too. It’s been live since January 2026 and since then we have been hosting the site with WP Engine and supporting the team.

So all in all, great times. We’re proud to work with an organisation like the NHS and the Eastern SDE team.