OIO system? was Re: SourceForge

[Andrew Ho <aho@superego.bic.uci.edu>]

On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Iztok Stotl wrote:

> Does this kind of aplication already exist ?
>
> Many doctors have problems colecting data for their clinical research in
> medicine. This is especially a problem when they want to collect data
> betwen different hospitals. This is usually a lot of paperwork.

Hi Iztok,
  As Karsten pointed out, the OIO system is being used for exactly this
application. OIO is one of the candidate packages for Debian-Med, but we
have not done much with Debian yet.
  I will provide a little more information with the hope that you may
become interested in making/using a Debian OIO package. I will try to
stick to the facts but you should know that I started the OIO project
back in 1998. :-)

> It would be nice if someone would make a web aplication, that would
> allow colecting differnet clinical data and it would be very
> customisible, like for example SourceForge.

The way the OIO system works is that you can use the web-browser and some
simple point-and-click controls to create customized web forms. These
web-forms can be used to collect data that describe patients. Furthermore,
there is an integrated data analysis module that supports data mining. Of
course, the data can also be exported as simple XML or comma-delimited
text files for external analysis.

The emphasis is on rapid/easy creation of highly customizable web-forms
that are "plug-and-play".

> The group leader would make a project and add his co-workers ...

The OIO system has a role-based access control system which
provides support for multiple users each with assigned one or more
assigned "roles".

> He would then choose the format (data type) and variables he would like
> to collect.

Exactly, in the OIO system, the format/datatype/fields/variables are
organized into "forms". Each research/clinical project can make use of
different set of forms. Forms can be shared between projects. Also, OIO
forms can be exported as XML and uploaded to the OIO Library for
repository and publication. Forms can be download from the OIO Library for
sharing and re-use.

> Offcourse, there would also be a forum, temporary analysis of the data,
> etc ....

No discussion forum in the OIO system yet. It would not be hard to add -
if you are interested in this.

Finally, we have been trying to make it easy to install. However, the OIO
system uses Zope, PostgreSQL, Psycopg Zope-to-PostgreSQL database
adapator, and a few other software components. A Debian package will be a
huge help.

Best regards,

Andrew
---
Andrew P. Ho, M.D.
OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes
www.TxOutcome.Org