Open-Source Collaboration Portal Development

The International Research Consortium for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (IRC) (www.crpsconsortium.org) is a newly formed not-for-profit organization comprised of thirty-six different research labs around the world.  The mission of the IRC is to promote clinical research into the pathophysiology, treatment and cure of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a rare and debilitating chronic pain disorder.

IRC was seeking a full-featured website solution that would help them create an external, public-facing website to provide information about the organization, required as part of an important grant application process.  They also wished for the solution to allow for the creation of a secure, private collaboration site to host the consortium members from the various research labs across the globe.

Dunn Solutions, a Platinum Liferay Services Partner, was chosen to design, develop and host the IRC website portal. Liferay 6.2, an open-source portal platform, was chosen as the best solution to meet the IRC's objectives.  Dunn's team worked with IRC's team to determine the site's architecture, and design the look and feel for the site, creating a theme applied to the site's design.

The secured collaboration portal was developed using many of Liferay's out-of-the-box capabilities including: a blog; member directory; document library; chat; custom theming; and a forum and message board.  The Dunn Team built a workflow for new registrations- once registrations are approved by IRC staff, consortium members can access the collaboration site and its content.   The website and portal are fully responsive or "mobile-ready", and optimize the users' experience for the device being used.

The new website portal meets the requirements for an important grant application and provides information to researchers interested in learning more about IRC.  The ease of Liferay's content management systems allows IRC staff and board members to have controlled administrative access for easy content maintenance.  And, consortium members access the secured collaboration area to exchange information and facilitate dialogue important to progress in their area of pain studies.