University of North Texas Health Science Center at FortWorth
The challenge
The Health Science Center (HSC) sets a strong strategic focus on fostering innovation and entrepreneurship within its community. The department, HSC Next, supports this focus by providing programs and opportunities to fill the innovation pipeline and build a more robust innovation ecosystem.
The challenge HSC Next faced was having multiple programs run out of their department and having one place to manage and organize items such as; incubating and growing ideas, multiple open calls and challenges, managing various workflows and users, better communicating the departments initiatives and impact as well as showcasing key events and resources that support their programs.
HSC Next decided to look for an external digital partner to help them develop a platform that could allow its teams to manage all their programming in one place.
The solution
To provide them with a highly customizable solution, HSC Next turned to Skipso to help create a platform from scratch that could truly benefit the campus and local community.
Having gathered all the necessary requirements in just a few weeks, Skipso implemented the new platform ready for community use immediately.
Throughthe platform:
- Students, staff andfaculty were able to submit ideas through a fully branded online platform
- A customized ideation workflow helped the judges move ideas from one stage of development to the next
- Scorecards were configured on the platform to help judges make evaluations based on predefined criteria
- Directories wereenabled to allow the platform to house resources, events, and the departments produced podcast episodes
- Submission and userswere managed through a centralized location, allowing admins to easily manageall segments of their different programs
The results
Inthe first 6 months of launching the platform, HSC Next had 5 open calls that garnered over 100 ideas and solutions that engaged the community on and offcampus in solving healthcare related problems.
In the last year the platform has provided several different workflows that allowsthe department to better manage their separate programming applications, onebeing the entire intake process and paperwork management for start-up biotech companies that are incubating on campus.
The platform has also provided HSC Next to better demonstrate their department'sfocus through a suite easily showcasing their programs, resources, and events.
Utilizing Skipo’s technology, HSC Next was able to build a powerful platform thatprovides their community with dedicated space to foster innovation.
