As one of the largest cancer centers in the country, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) cares for more than 130,000 people each year. Its digital reach is broader, with more than 5.3 million unique visitors annually from around the world.
Phase2 worked with MSK to architect and build their first-ever enterprise-wide digital patient platform on Drupal 8, which was still a beta release candidate at the time. Working with MSK to launch what was then the newest version of Drupal helped them become a globally-recognized pioneer in not only cancer research, but as an organization that embraces cutting- edge technology.
Since then, Phase2’s work has grown to include MSK’s Development Group (giving.mskcc.org). We serve as their development partner through architecting, building, and maintaining the five Drupal sites that run their donation and fundraising initiatives.
Recently, an increased focus has been placed on enhancing experiences through personalization. This initiative has resulted in more effective marketing campaigns, allowing Memorial Sloan Kettering to continue their essential work in the fight against cancer.
Enhanced Flexibility & Developer Velocity
Drupal 8’s configuration management capabilities, front end integrations, and object-oriented programming all contributed to the enhanced flexibility of the platform and accelerated velocity of development. Key alterations in the core software (HTML template extensions, for example) allowed difficult problems to be solved more easily than was possible in Drupal 7. Given the vibrant level of engagement and community support for Drupal 8, Memorial Sloan Kettering has also guaranteed a long-lasting return on investment by thinking ahead.
Giving Back
Together, Memorial Sloan Kettering and Phase2 were able to “give back” to the open source community.
As a result of the project, many key patches, bug fixes, and modules were contributed to the Drupal 8 core, moving Drupal 8 closer to final release. And because this was one of the first major Drupal 8 installations, we were able to share the knowledge gained from the experience with other organizations contemplating a similar move.
Not only has the Cancer Center widened the talent pool for potential in-house development recruits, Memorial Sloan Kettering played an important role in the open source development of enterprise Drupal 8.