The Translational Medicine Research Collaboration (TMRC) is a collaborative venture in clinical and basic research across four universities, four national health centers, a large pharmaceutical drug company and a Scottish government agency. With 500 employees, TMRC conducts clinical and basic research with these stakeholders. The aim is to help develop novel drugs for different indications where there is clear unmet clinical need and to develop new diagnostics that aid clinicians in deciding correct and appropriate treatments.

Given the number of disparate organizations and individuals TMRC must work closely with, it faced the challenge of exchanging and viewing varied document types and data sets among specific sets of collaborators. Ad hoc solutions for sharing documentation, especially iterations of project proposals, led to version control mishaps. Emailing documents and trying to gather feedback from multiple sources often required one person to take the helm in tracking all changes and compiling them into one updated document. This proved to be extremely inefficient and time consuming.