NIH | Genetic and Rare Diseases (GARD)
Information Center
NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) engaged APV to modernize the Genetic and Rare Diseases (GARD) Information Center to improve how patients and clinicians access clear, accurate rare disease information. APV assigned a team with deep expertise in health IT, knowledge management, and contact center operations to understand challenges and priorities across GARD’s systems and services.
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These discussions identified and prioritized enhancements to content development, inquiry processes, and data workflows, including improvements to metadata and CRM/CMS alignment. APV collaborated closely with the customer and applied an Agile-based approach to streamline delivery and ensure the work continually aligned with program goals.
Tools and Technologies: Salesforce CRM/CMS, Palantir, AI & Semantic Tagging, NIH Templates, Google Analytics.
Benefits/Outcomes
Expanded access to high-quality information by publishing 1,200+ new disease pages and making content more understandable and actionable for patients and caregivers through plain-language and accessibility improvements.
Improved operational efficiency by reducing redundant content by 20%, strengthening metadata and structured workflows, and enhancing coordination between CRM and CMS systems to ensure consistent delivery of information across platforms.
Advanced data-driven prioritization of content through AI-enabled strategies that help focus editorial efforts on diseases with the highest real-world impact, aligning publishing decisions with user needs and improving transparency in content planning.
Enhanced inquiry response performance and future automation readiness by meeting SLAs for timely responses, improving SOPs and case workflows, and establishing the foundation for predictive routing and chatbot-based self-service to elevate customer experience.