A Tool for Collecting [Clinical Trials] Data
All our online tools are powered by LimeSurvey™ software. We strongly recommend you to get an extensive look at LimeSurvey's oficial website to make up your mind about the application numerous features (more than you might expect), consistent documentation and engaged community.
About LimeSurvey
LimeSurvey is a flexible web-based application for the creation and administration of online questionnaires.LimeSurvey is an open source (absolutely free) software and you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991. Complementary information about LimeSurvey license & copyright is available here.
Top reasons to use LimeSurvey in medical research environment
LimeSurvey is widely used in higher education and in a lot of universities all over the world.
LimeSurvey's "Expression Manager" was created by Dr. Tom White. This powerful and sophisticated system, controls the majority of the survey-taking portion (including navigation, conditional branching, validation, and tailoring).
The application is constantly improving and new releases allow the creation and implementation of plugins and we can expect some promising add-ons in the research field. A good example of an external developpment of LimeSurvey is the GemsTracker package, initially designed as an extension to the functionality of LimeSurvey and used as a respondent tracking system for clinical trials and population studies.
LimeSurvey versus RedCap 1-2
With LimeSurvey, there's no administrative overhead so you are free to build and launch surveys as needed once you have access to the system. For REDCap Survey, we need to track usage and report stats; therefore, there's an administrative component that may present a practical limitation for surveys that require quick implementations and/or frequent edits with very little advanced notice.
Overview and key features
Installation & security features- Easy to install on any internet or intranet server
- Local installation possible for offline use on desktops, laptops or tablets
- Allows secure web authentication and SSL encryption (HTTPS protocol) required for questionnaires collecting protected health information (PHI)
- Powerful functions for mathematical calculation and assessment
- Mutiple output formats and graphical displays for collected data
- Results exportation to external common data analysis packages - Microsoft Excel (csv), R, STATA. or SPSS.
- Allows to pass a value (identifier, predefined answer) to the questionnaire at initialization
- Allows at the end to send some values (identifier, answers, overall score, assessment) to other application (EHR)
- API: "LimeSurvey RemoteControl 2" allows to control specific functionality of LimeSurvey from any other application
1. Source: rc.partners.org
2. Related: Singleton et al. Wireless Data Collection of Self-administered Surveys using Tablet Computers. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. 2011;2011:1261-9. Epub 2011 Oct 22. PMID: 20584330
