The Department of Social and Preventive Medicine is one of the first departments in the Universiti Malaya to set up its website. The SPM website was started by Professor Awang Bulgiba back in 1999 as www.ummc.edu.my/fom/dept/spm. Dr Awang Bulgiba summarised his experience of developing the website in an article published in the Journal of the University Malaya Medical Centre (JUMMEC) in 2000. It was then updated by various other staff from the department when Professor Awang went for his PhD in the United Kingdom in 2001.
Dr Karina Razali and Dr Quek Kia Fatt were the staff involved in the update until 2005. From 2005-2008, the website has been under the care of Dr Victor Hoe Chee Wai. The URL for the website has evolved to http://spm.ummc.edu.my and the final URL is http://spm.um.edu.my when we move the website to be associated with the Universiti Malaya.
The language used for the site has also changed from HTML pages to a more dynamic page using PHP in 2008. At the time updating of the website was done using web authoring software, i.e., the Macromedia Dreamweaver. Before Dr Victor Hoe went for his PhD in Australia at the end of 2008, he wrote the Guideline for Managing the SPM Website to provide guidance to Dr Azlan Darus. Dr Azlan took over as the Webmaster from 2008-2012.
After the completion of his PhD, Dr Victor was again appointed as the Webmaster for the SPM website. The SPM website when through another major revamp in 2018 when it was migrated to an external hosting site and adopted WordPress as its content management system. With the adaptation of WordPress as the CMS, more staff and also students are now contributing to posting news and updates on the SPM website.
The main landing page of the SPM website consists of four feature pages that are in line with our core business, i.e., public health education. Then is it followed with the latest news. The decision to have the latest news on the landing page is to showcase the activities of the students, staff and department. This will encourage people to come to the page to get the latest news about the department.
The department has also linked its news to its Facebook page and Twitter feeds.
Besides that, the Department has its own YouTube Channel to share recorded lectures, webinars, interviews and other video content.