The MSF Science Portal: A new one-stop-shop for MSF’s public research content
As part of MSF’s humanitarian mission, we conduct hundreds of research studies each year aimed at improving care for our patients and advocating for evidence-based policies and practices. In the past, the findings and knowledge produced from this work have been published across different online platforms, making it difficult for many users to find the full range of our materials. To help solve this problem, the new MSF Science Portal creates a unified way to access this wealth of information and make it more easily accessible from anywhere in the world, especially for MSF project teams. The broad aim is to develop this beta platform into a one-stop-shop for all MSF public research content, and in turn to help expand MSF’s medical voice and impact.
Two years after the MSF Science Portal project was launched, the platform went live in November this year. The project was funded by MSF-USA and guided by an intersectional Steering Committee under the DirMed platform.
MSF Sweden Innovation Unit caught up with one of the main drivers behind the MSF Science Portal, Patricia Kahn, Scientific Editorial Director at MSF-USA, to learn more about it, the collaborations with Google and Microsoft that helped shape the project plan and optimize it for deployment, and how user-centricity was embedded in the design process from the get-go.
“Making this platform available in low-bandwidth settings was not an add-on at the end. User-centricity was woven into the concept from the start.”
Let’s start with the why
Innovation can come from anywhere, but it requires access to information. By democratizing access to MSF’s research outputs, Patricia Kahn views the Science Portal as a tool that can help MSF realize its aspiration to empower more people across geographic settings and diverse backgrounds to participate in MSF’s work and program- and project-building. In short, one goal of the Portal is to equip MSF innovators and future innovators, wherever they are, with the tools they needed to ideate creative solutions to prevalent problems.
Several of the sites where MSF’s public medical research content lives were not specifically designed for low-bandwidth settings, and analytics of the current MSF Field Research Database show that it has not been actively used in most countries where MSF works. To avoid this with the Science Portal, Patricia Kahn and team co-leader John Ryan Brooks (Information Systems Coordinator based in the International Office) started with user needs and then developed the platform to meet them. The design process was much shaped and supported by the team’s interactions with Google (more on this further down in this article.)
User-centricity embedded into every stage of the design process
Patricia Kahn emphasizes that making a new digital tool like the Portal useful in low-bandwidth settings is not an add-on at the end but should be woven into the concept from the start. For this reason, comprehensive user research was conducted at an early stage, and again at key points in the process. Over 200 responses to an initial online survey sent out in 2018 and 20 qualitative interviews conducted shortly thereafter provided insights into who the makeup of different user groups, what they need, and how the platform should be designed to meet these needs. Beyond providing information on what features future users wanted the platform to have, the user research made it very clear that there was a genuine need among people working with MSF for an easier way to find and search the full range of MSF’s public research content.
Features and functionalities that have been developed to ensure easy access and usability, and to engage users, include:
A design that allows pages to load fast and enables people with a poor internet connection to browse and save interesting content for download when their internet connection is stronger.
User-friendly search and browse functionalities where users can enter a term into a search bar and filter the results based on type of content, country, published date, author, or journal.
Featured content space on the home page to highlight selected medical issues, crises, and settings—adding a ‘news-y’ aspect to the Portal alongside its archival function.
Language options: the site navigation and filters are available in five languages. The aim is to build out this functionality with time and have the platform be available in multiple languages.
Collaborations with Google and Microsoft to enhance usability and cybersecurity
Early in the project, a collaboration between MSF and Google helped the Portal team refine its initial vision and create a first prototype. A small group of staff from across MSF joined seven people from Google for a so-called Google Sprint—a four-day guided process for answering critical business or organizational questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas—at Google’s headquarters in Munich, Germany, in June 2019. The innovative method aims to accelerate the development pathway starting with brainstorming, then narrowing down and selecting the approach to take forward, and finally transforming it into a more concrete plan and creating a basic prototype.
Through the initial user research done in 2018, the MSF team walked into the Sprint with a clear idea of who their target users were. Working with Google’s experts helped the team put form to how they defined the user groups, a process that was supported by insights gained from seven 90-minute long deep-interviews with persons representing each key user group, conducted prior to the Sprint by a Google user research expert.
From there, and after endorsement by the project Steering Committee and the Medical Director platform, the Portal was built by a US-based digital technology company called Door3 and then turned over to MSF-USA for debugging, data migration and polishing, and setting up the hosting environment.
In the final stages before launch, the Portal and the MSF-USA Systems teams also joined forces with another technology giant, Microsoft. Since the Portal is built using Microsoft Azure software tools—the new cloud computing standard for MSF—having the company’s help with ensuring robust firewalls and optimizing search functionality gave the platform an added boost. The employees at Google and Microsoft supporting the project have all donated their hours to MSF through the companies’ respective pro bono programs.
Next steps
With the launch behind them, Patricia Kahn identifies four main activities that she and her team will focus on next:
Promoting the platform within and outside MSF to ensure that people in the countries where MSF works know about it, engage with it, and can use it to inform their decision making.
Expanding the range of content available on the Portal. At launch, the Portal collection includes content from the previous MSF repository, the Field Research Database (all MSF co-authored journal articles, some research study protocols and survey templates, and MSF Ethics Review Board documents) and from recent MSF and Epicentre Scientific Days. Content will be updated one or more times weekly and expanded over time to include additional MSF conference presentations along with protocols, technical reports and guidance, and MSF research-related policies.
Encouraging input from across MSF and decentralizing management of the site. From inviting ideas for timely thematic content collections that can be highlighted on the homepage to a more distributed model of supporting the platform, decentralization should help ensure that the platform is in tune with needs from across the movement.
Preparing for the next phase of development. The plan is to add further functions and features over time and continuously let user feedback guide how the platform grows and evolves.
The progress of each of these activities will be monitored and used to assess the success of the platform. Softer metrics such as user experience and satisfaction will be analyzed together with traditional analytics to get a detailed understanding of who is using the platform from where and how well it helps them find the information they deem useful.
If you have any questions about or feedback on the Science Portal, please email patricia.kahn@newyork.msf.org.