Research data management tool reaches million-user milestone

Vanderbilt University’s Research Electronic Data Capture, a web-based platform for building and managing online surveys and databases, now has more than one million users worldwide.


Vanderbilt University’s Research Electronic Data Capture, a web-based platform for building and managing online surveys and databases, now has more than one million users worldwide.

The research data management tool, which captures data online or offline for research studies, includes more than 3,600 institutions in 131 countries among its user base and has been cited in more than 7,700 scientific papers.

According to Vanderbilt, more than a quarter of the scientific papers that have cited REDCap have been in the areas of pediatrics, surgery and public, environmental and occupational health.

More than 15,000 REDCap projects support basic, clinical and translational research as well as epidemiological studies. And, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, REDCap partner sites were quickly mobilized to share methods for surveillance data collection in both academia and state governments.

Launched 15 years ago by the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, REDCap was developed by Paul Harris, professor of biomedical informatics, biomedical engineering and biostatistics at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
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“We are very proud of both the REDCap platform and our international consortium of administrators and end users,” said Harris, who is also director of VUMC’s Office of Research Informatics. “REDCap has allowed our team to empower researchers across the globe. These researchers provide feedback that helps our development team continuously evolve the platform in innovative ways.”

The REDCap Consortium serves as a community of academic, non-profit and government institutions around the world that have adopted the platform. Software administrators at member sites manage local installations of the platform and support local investigators.

REDCapCons, annual or bi-annual conferences, are held in Australia, Brazil, Japan and South Africa. In September, Vanderbilt will host the 11th North American REDCapCon in Vancouver, Canada.

In addition to REDCap, Harris also launched and runs ResearchMatch, a national program that matches volunteers for studies and researchers recruiting patients for studies and trials. Currently, the program serves about 150,000 research volunteers and 165 research institutions.

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