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. 2011 Dec;18 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):i140-3.
doi: 10.1136/amiajnl-2011-000354. Epub 2011 Aug 17.

Enabling distributed electronic research data collection for a rural Appalachian tobacco cessation study

Tara B Borlawsky  1 , Omkar Lele, Daniel Jensen, Nancy E Hood, Mary Ellen Wewers
Affiliations

Enabling distributed electronic research data collection for a rural Appalachian tobacco cessation study

Tara B Borlawsky et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2011 Dec.

Abstract

Tobacco use is increasingly prevalent among vulnerable populations, such as people living in rural Appalachian communities. Owing to limited access to a reliable internet service in such settings, there is no widespread adoption of electronic data capture tools for conducting community-based research. By integrating the REDCap data collection application with a custom synchronization tool, the authors have enabled a workflow in which field research staff located throughout the Ohio Appalachian region can electronically collect and share research data. In addition to allowing the study data to be exchanged in near-real-time among the geographically distributed study staff and centralized study coordinator, the system architecture also ensures that the data are stored securely on encrypted laptops in the field and centrally behind the Ohio State University Medical Center enterprise firewall. The authors believe that this approach can be easily applied to other analogous study designs and settings.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of synchronization workflow.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Synchronization tool interface for pushing information from the user's local REDCap database (MOBILE) to the central REDCap database (ENTERPRISE). If the research field staff is sending data that already resides in REDCap ENTERPRISE, then they are presented with a discrepancy table. To address such discrepancies, the user can then either modify the data in REDCap MOBILE as appropriate, or continue sending it to REDCap ENTERPRISE, which will overwrite any existing data.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Synchronization tool interface for pulling information from the central REDCap database (ENTERPRISE) to the user's local REDCap database (MOBILE).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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