Mayo Clinic CTSA Hosts REDCap Day 2010
The Mayo Clinic Center for Translational Science Activities (CTSA) welcomed more than 70 participants from more than 30 institutions on Aug. 17 for the second-annual REDCap Day, the yearly gathering of the REDCap Consortium. This consortium guides the ongoing development of REDCap, a suite of Web-based tools designed to support data capture for research studies.
REDCap Day provides a forum for REDCap Consortium members to share best practices, network with colleagues, discuss collective challenges and learn about future REDCap software development efforts.
The day began with a welcome from Christopher Chute, M.D., Dr. P.H., informatics director, Mayo Clinic CTSA; opening remarks from Paul Harris, Ph.D., director, Office of Research Informatics Operations, Vanderbilt University; and a keynote talk by Elaine Collier, M.D., senior adviser to the director, National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health.
The balance of the workshop was divided into five panel discussions, each of which featured several subject matter experts from across the REDCap Consortium:
- Business model and use cases
- New features, customized development and potential use cases
- Data interoperability
- Regulatory compliance
- Data standards
"The active REDCap Consortium feeds site adoption as well as new functionality," says Dr. Collier. "The enthusiasm and broad knowledge of how researchers work, plus the focused energy of members, leads to a constantly enhanced tool for researchers."
REDCap software is now available in four languages and is employed by more than 11,800 end-users in 17 countries. Given the continuing growth of REDCap software and tools, REDCap Day organizers plan to extend next year's event to two days and include more hands-on training sessions. REDCap Day 2011 will be held in late August at the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute in Aurora, Colo.
"The annual REDCap Day works to strengthen the cohesiveness of the REDCap Consortium and sparks new, creative ideas," says Michael Lin, informatics manager, Mayo Clinic CTSA. "And overall, the REDCap Consortium exemplifies how collective intelligence and effort can work to advance a great cause at an accelerated pace."
The REDCap Consortium includes 150 active institutional partners supported by CTSAs, Research Centers in Minority Institutions and other academic and nonprofit organizations.
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