The UCSF Profiles Team got more international attention for its enhancements to the Profiles product and the level of engaged users last year. Over the past several months, the Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) has been in talks with UCSF Profiles to gain insight and plan an approach to create a system that will show and track their researchers’ work around the globe. TDR is a global collaborative program sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO).

At the TDR’s invitation, Eric Meeks, Chief Technology Officer, and Brian Turner, Product Director, both from UCSF CTSI, traveled to Geneva to meet with the TDR team. We discussed the capabilities of Profiles in depth, the work we’ve done over time to get the traffic and user engagement that we have, and the system-level requirements for their research networking/tracking system. We also reviewed their plans for the soon-to-be-released request for proposal (RFP) and provided feedback on technical RFPs and projects in general. We met for the majority of a day, then had a chance to see a bit of Geneva and enjoy some Swiss/French cuisine before heading home.

Next steps will be to review and possibly respond to the TDR’s forthcoming RFP as a potential service provider to host their Profiles instance.