Singapore's Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine develops curriculum across time zones, with help from Dropbox for Business

Singapore is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, and it's still growing quickly. Yet the city-state only has two undergraduate medical schools, both trying to keep up with the high demand for trained medical professionals.

In an effort to meet this growing need for doctors, the Singapore Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education teamed up to focus their resources.

The result was the founding of Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Singapore's third medical institution. Although Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine) is based in Singapore, medical professionals in both Singapore and London work together to develop the school's curriculum.

Working together across continents, though, is no simple task. Staff members in both locations need to both share tons of information, and quickly collaborate to develop coursework from different time zones. To facilitate this intercontinental collaboration, LKCMedicine relied on a mash-up of portable hard drives, email attachments, and ad-supported file hosting sites, but none of these solutions were the right fit for the team. "We were using whatever we could find," said Paul Gagnon, Director of eLearning and IT Services at LKCMedicine.

The team knew they had to streamline collaboration, so the school's CIO suggested implementing a legacy solution. But Gagnon knew that wasn't likely to fit the team's needs, so he proposed a better solution — Dropbox for Business. "I told our CIO that if he could show me that I would have the ease of use I have with Dropbox, be able to sync content to all of my devices, and give faculty the ability to do all that with just one login, I'd be with him," Gagnon said.

Because none of that was possible with a legacy solution, Gagnon got the green light to deploy Dropbox for Business. Now, it's easier than ever for staff members to develop and share materials across the globe. For example, coursework files created at Imperial College in London can be placed into Dropbox for review by staff at the Nanyang Technological University campus. The two teams work together until everyone agrees on a final version, and then Gagnon's crew distributes it to the remainder of the faculty. "We work with a seven-hour time difference, so the real-time, anytime, anywhere file access we get with Dropbox really helps," explained Gagnon. "With Dropbox, our content development processes and the crucial communication that takes place during review and quality control are much more efficient."

With IT concerns out of the way, Gagnon and his team can now focus on the mission at hand — putting together a top-tier medical school curriculum and getting it into the classroom.

To see how Dropbox for Business can help your team collaborate more effectively, try it free.