Frequently Asked Questions

Open Data Capture is a web-based electronic data capture platform. It is designed for administering remote and in-person clinical instruments.

To answer this question, it is important to understand the distinction between Open Data Capture (the software) and a specific deployment of Open Data Capture.

Open Data Capture is free software designed to run on a Linux server. This means that any individual or organization can install their own version of Open Data Capture. However, doing so requires access to a web server and specialized technical knowledge.

The Douglas Neuroinformatics Platform manages a deployment of Open Data Capture. This deployed version is available to any researcher at the Douglas Research Centre.

Open Data Capture is open-source software, which means that the software itself is available for free. However, deploying and managing an instance of Open Data Capture requires technical expertise and server infrastructure. As such, some organizations may offer a hosted version of Open Data Capture for a fee.

An instrument refers to any tool that can be used to collect data. Currently, this includes forms and interactive tasks. In the future, we have plans to support binary data formats (e.g., data from wearable devices, neuroimaging data).