Kansas City Life Sciences

Overview

The Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute (KCALSI) is a non-profit organization assisting with the transformation of Kansas City into a center of excellence in life sciences research, development and commercialization. The KCALSI and its stakeholder institutions share an ambitious goal—to excel in the areas of animal health/nutrition, bio-pharma/drug discovery, cardiovascular, neuroscience, oncology, and personalized medicines to become a national leader in biotechnology fields. KCALSI serves as the coordinating body for the Kansas City region’s life sciences research initiatives, specifically as broker, facilitator, matchmaker and potential funding organization for collaborative research initiatives.

Challenge

An important goal for KCALSI was to facilitate communication and collaboration between scientists at stakeholder institutions, including:

    — Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics
    — KC University of Medicine and Biosciences
    — Kansas State University
    — Midwest Research Institute
    — Saint Luke’s Hospital
    — Stowers Institute for Medical Research
    — University of Kansas Medical Center
    — University of Kansas-Lawrence
    — University of Missouri-Columbia
    — University of Missouri-Kansas City

Several external advisory committees, including the Scientific Advisory Committee, and the Civic Council, recommended establishing a web portal for establishing connectivity among the stakeholders and supporters of the institute. The portal would bring together external news/research, internal content and a collaborative set of tools to help users work together. The desire was to create a platform for the fostering of scientific networking, knowledge creation, technology transfer, and commercial growth opportunities. KCALSI turned to Trabon Solutions to design and develop the envisioned collaboration portal.

Strategies and Tactics

After a short facilitated discovery process, Trabon recommended an approach and design including tools and Web applications to foster the collaboration process. The new system needed to foster collaboration at both a regional and national level and provide the opportunity to leverage resources and knowledge shared in a secure and easy-to-use framework. Private workgroups, document management, private web conferencing, and instant messaging were all capabilities designed as a part of the new portal.

Results

  • Capture, manage and share information
  • Collaborate online with other professionals often in real time
  • Easily manage and change content, roles and permissions
  • Promote innovation
  • Speed development
  • Decrease time to market

Application