Henry Ford Health (HFH), based in Detroit, Michigan, is a leading healthcare system renowned for its commitment to innovation in medical research. In partnership with Michigan State University, HFH bridges the gap between clinical needs and academic expertise across both institutions.

Despite this partnership, clinicians at HFH and faculty at MSU face challenges in connecting across disciplines due to fragmented communication channels and a lack of centralized resources. This hinders the potential for interdisciplinary research and limits opportunities for collaboration among clinicians and experts such as engineers and scientists.

Our Research Synergy Vanguard Portal (RSVP) 2.0 addresses this challenge by providing both a web- and mobile-based platform that streamlines collaboration. The system helps users find research partners not only across institutions but also within their own organizations. The system intelligently analyzes user expertise and research interests to recommend ideal collaborators, creating a seamless and efficient networking experience.

Our mobile app introduces a swipe-to-match feature, enabling users to quickly browse and connect with potential collaborators. This new feature, along with automatic message suggestions, further encourages meaningful collaboration in a manner that fits the fast-paced schedule of many users.

With advanced semantic search capabilities, users refine their searches using multiple inputs, ensuring precise and relevant results in seconds.

Our portal is built using a ReactJS front end and a Flask back end for application logic. We utilize Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) for natural language processing to enhance search capabilities, and Elasticsearch for efficient search performance.