Work Smarter with ISAAC
The ISAAC Health Research Information system is a web-based application
for administering and managing health research projects/studies
and the associated data. ISAAC's easy to use layout allows study
personnel to quickly and easily enter and validate (double data
enter) study information collected on paper forms, manage users
(such as data entry staff), add and update participant ID's and
information, and share study data with other researchers by means
of data and codebook downloads.
ISAAC's proprietary form management system, called DEFE (Database
of Electronic Form Elements), automates the process of developing
data entry, data validation, and data edit forms. It also tightly
links the online forms to the data tables that store the entered
values and the code book that describes the downloaded data. In
this way, researchers can be confident that the data they download
for use in statistical analysis packages is accurately described
in all the related documentation.
Since all data entry, validation and editing is performed via web-based
electronic forms, users can be located anywhere in the world and
can be processing forms at any time, twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week. All data that has been entered is available at any
time for download. Data can be initially entered by a user at one
site, and immediately validated by another user at another site.
The data entry and validation forms also give the user the choice
of the number of questions they want to see on a single page, allowing
flexibility when entering data from sites with different levels
of Internet connectivity.
The revolutionary feature of the ISAAC system is its ability to
share entered data between researchers. Principal Investigators
can easily designate research data to be made available to other
ISAAC users on a multiple levels. They can share all of their data
with a particular researcher, or a particular data set with all
other researchers. The sharing level is in the complete control
of the PI. ISAAC will never share data that has not been specifically
registered to do so. It is the hope of the ISAAC team and its funders
that eventually all of the data stored within the ISAAC system will
be made available to every researcher. It is through this aggregation
and collaboration of health research information that new cures
and better understandings of health issues will be more quickly
advanced.
Copyright © 2003 ISAAC, all rights reserved.
