Facilitating group learning and dialogue between neighboring academic institutions using a collaborative web application framework.

: We describe a web-based academic portal designed to promote both synchronous and asynchronous information exchange among biomedical informaticians in the Greater Boston area. The system facilitates academic interaction through several collaborative online applications including wikis, blogs, group-calendars, group-announcements, group-forums, and shared file-storage. This infrastructure provides a means for users to contribute and tag content and to receive alerts as content of interest emerges. This framework helps facilitate group learning and dialogue among geographically distinct facilities.