Background

Open Data Capture is developed by the Douglas Neuroinformatics Platform, a small team of technical personnel at the Douglas Research Centre in Montreal, Canada. Our work is funded by a grant associated with the McGill Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives (HBHL) initiative. This grant provides us with, among other things, a mandate to improve digital mental health services at the Douglas. Central to this mandate is providing a standardized, secure, and easy-to-use solution for clinical research data capture and storage.

Our objective is to modernize clinical research data management at the Douglas. Current practices vary widely between clinics, typically consisting of either spreadsheets with inconsistent and undocumented naming conventions, or loose collections of printed documents or handwritten notes. Often, these data are not versioned and exchanged through email, physical transfer, or fax.

Our vision for Open Data Capture is to provide an integrated solution to supersede these disparate, obsolete practices. In so doing, the platform will greatly enhance data sharing and open science, while also ensuring a higher level of patient privacy and data security.