Clinical education / technology transfer · 2004–2020
Taking four federally funded clinical programs to market
When a Dartmouth research lab closed, four federally funded clinical training programs were commercialised rather than shelved — and sold to a national professional audience for another decade.
The situation
The Interactive Media Laboratory at Dartmouth Medical School spent years building government-funded interactive training for clinicians and emergency responders — simulation-led programs, funded by the NIH, the CDC and the federal Office on Violence Against Women, authored and designed by Dr Joe Henderson.
In 2010 the lab closed. That is normally where federally funded software goes to die: the grant ends, the lab winds down, and programs that cost millions to build stop being available to the people they were built for.
What happened instead
World 2 Systems was formed to take the programs to market — a technology transfer out of Dartmouth that kept four clinical training products in active national use for another decade.
The portfolio site. All four programs, one audience of professional buyers.
Sexual Assault: Forensic and Clinical Management, delivered with the International Association of Forensic Nurses and the federal Office on Violence Against Women.
The Virtual Terrorism Response Academy: Ops-Plus for WMD Hazmat, used by fire, police, EMS, military and federal trainers.
Genetics in Clinical Practice: A Team Approach, produced in collaboration with the CDC and the American Medical Association, accredited for 12 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits, with a virtual mini-fellowship led by Edward McCabe, MD, PhD.
A virtual clinic: a patient roster you work through, simulated consultations, and case lectures.
Smoking Cessation for Pregnancy and Beyond: A Virtual Clinic, built around simulated patients.
Smoking Cessation for Pregnancy and Beyond, and the Virtual Terrorism Response Academy.
The work
All four product websites. Each program needed its own site to explain a complex clinical product to a sceptical professional audience, establish accreditation credibility, and sell. A clinician deciding whether to spend twelve hours of continuing education credit on an interactive program is making a serious professional judgement, and the site is where that judgement gets made.
Two of the programs themselves. Beyond the marketing sites, the genetics and smoking cessation programs were co-built with the IML team — Eric Kidd and Cecile Williams — under Dr Henderson’s authorship and design.
The business behind it. Payroll, tax and grant compliance, federal reporting and client support for multimillion-dollar government contracts, plus front-line technical support for nurses and physicians working through certification in the field.
What the market said
On the programs this work carried:
“Smoking Cessation for Pregnancy and Beyond deals with an extremely important topic in a novel format, with simulated patients and a great faculty of experts. It’s highly informative and actually great fun to do. This program sets a very high bar for web-based education… or any continuing education. Highly recommended!”
— C. Everett Koop, MD, ScD, former United States Surgeon General
“The Genetics in Clinical Practice: A Team Approach training program has been the gold standard of interactive multimedia programs for nearly a decade.”
— Tracy L. Trotter, MD, FAAP, Senior Partner, San Ramon Valley Primary Care
On adoption, from a national hazmat trainer: VTRA in use “from Washington to Wisconsin, from Michigan to Houston, from California to North Carolina,” with a copy secured for every hazmat team in Connecticut. Testers included the FBI, the Indiana Department of Homeland Security and Guilford County Emergency Services in North Carolina.
Why it is here
Most web portfolios show sites. This one shows a decade of selling complex, accredited, federally funded products to professionals who do not buy on enthusiasm — and the marketing sites that had to carry that.
It is also the clearest answer to a question institutional clients ask without saying it out loud: does this person understand how our world works? Grant compliance, federal reporting, accreditation bodies, and clinicians who need a certificate at the end are not things you pick up from a brief.
The programs and their sites went offline when World 2 Systems wound down in 2020, and the Internet Archive preserved the text but not the artwork — the screenshots above come from our own records. Archived copies of the pages remain: the portfolio site and Genetics in Clinical Practice.