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Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research

UX Strategy | Website Development | Software Development

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Taming Complexity: How Northwoods’ Innovative Salesforce Integration Improved Website Data Management and User Experience

The Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) is a collaborative research organization that is improving outcomes for transplant patients around the world. Its studies use sophisticated statistical techniques and the power of large numbers to deal with the most timely and pressing issues in cellular therapy.

CIBMTR provides a unique resource of information and expertise to the medical and scientific community, with data from more than 700,000 patients, 1,900 publications, and approximately 200 ongoing studies and clinical trials. 

The organization’s previous website was an outdated, 300+ page SharePoint public site that lacked search functionality – a major detriment considering its commitment to serve as a premier data and resource solution. Looking to improve its user experience, CIBMTR turned to the team at Northwoods for our deep expertise in website development and complex data management.

The Situation

  • CIBMTR’s complete dataset is managed in Salesforce, which serves as the central repository for data provided by researchers worldwide – including information on committees, members, publications, presentations, studies, and transplant centers. 
  • When looking to redesign its former website, the organization was faced with two challenges in effectively and efficiently presenting such a vast array of resources:
    • User Experience –The previous website data library limited information to a simple listing by year, restricting users’ ability to search and sort resources; with hundreds of datasets, it was painfully difficult for practitioners to find the information they needed.
    • Data Integration – Expanding search and sorting functionality would require CIBMTR to import and manage a large amount of additional information from its data repository in Salesforce. Like most organizations, CIBMTR has limited resources to organize, tag and enter this information, so the solution had to be automated.
       

The Solution

  • After evaluating a range of methods to manage data on the new site, our team developed an API call to Salesforce to automate the process of importing data into Titan CMS, an enterprise content management system powered by Northwoods.
  • This seamless, third-party integration ensures that critical information is accurately collected, stored, and kept up to date, and it provided a solid foundation for content and structure on the CIBMTR website. 
  • Our team further leveraged the integration to improve the website user experience through advanced faceted search and filtering, allowing users to tailor results by keyword, committee, date range, patient age, disease, outcomes and more. 
  • Northwoods also connected multiple datasets on the back end so pages automatically display related content, such as study information, working committee details, contact information, and research abstracts. 

CIBMTR's new filtering capabilities

 

Technical Details

Titan CMS connects to the Salesforce environment on a scheduled basis, retrieves the latest information, and updates data directly in Titan CMS. For example, when a new publication is imported into Titan CMS, it automatically appears on its own page and is available to filter and find from the Publication search page. 

Salesforce data is also used to organize and profile related content, such as committee details and publications. On the back end, these related datasets include an available list of committees and relevant publications that are populated as lookup fields sourced from corresponding Salesforce data. 

Northwoods’ efforts have provided CIBMTR with a powerful tool that transforms complex data into a highly useful interface. Visitors to the site can access the most accurate, relevant, and comprehensive research data available with related content at their fingertips.
 

Northwoods Data Integration - CIBMTR Solution Process

Northwoods’ process for gathering and presenting data on the CIBMTR website involves five steps:

  1. Gain access to external source, ex: the Salesforce API (or just about any data source we have an API for or programmatic control over)
  2. Build a Titan CMS Data Site with a schema to support this retrieved data 
  3. Build a Processing Engine that handles the following tasks: 
    a. Secure authentication to the API 
    b. Pull the data and clean/transform it as necessary 
    c. Error checking and data cleanup 
  4. Create Titan CMS Background Tasks to run the processor on a schedule 
  5. Cleanup (purging old records, notifications, post processing, etc.)

hand-drawn bird, chirping

Partnering with Northwoods for our website was a strategic decision that went far beyond a simple website facelift – and it has paid off! Our business in healthcare data analytics is complex and can be exceptionally difficult to navigate, which often makes it problematic to present the information in a cohesive and meaningful way. Northwoods took those challenges head-on and developed a solution which not only provides a superior end-user experience, but also created an elegant back-end environment which allows for easy maintenance and scalability.

The end-users are incredibly happy with the advanced search and filtering capabilities of the website, which in turn drives more user engagement. Meanwhile, the IT support team is equally excited about the back-end automation for its ease of use and vast improvement in speed, accuracy, and timeliness over our previous website. Partnering with Northwoods was the right choice for CIBMTR. They solved the problems with our public site and they made us look good while doing it. 

– Thomas “TAD” Degen, BI & Data Solutions Architect, CIBMTR

The Outcome

  • Avoiding manual efforts to upload data from Salesforce to Titan CMS allows CIBMTR to save time and maintain the integrity of its data.
  • Visitors can now easily search and filter results from hundreds of studies and publications to quickly find the information they need along with immediate access to relevant related resources.
  • CIBMTR partners are thrilled with the functionality and look and feel of the site, and their website managers have the flexibility to efficiently handle requests from a wide array of stakeholders.
  • By making its research readily available to clinicians and patients, CIBMTR is furthering its mission to support collaboration within the transplant community.
     

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