New Look, Better Security

This week, we rolled out a new look for our login screen, enhanced our security and provided an additional navigation option.

Our old login look was functional and secure.

 

However, it didn't have a very modern look.  Our new login screen provides the ability for users to get help when logging in, and also looks a little more current.

We have also provided some additional navigation options.  Since we've started, we have provided the left-hand menu as depicted below.  It is functional and gets the job done.

Now, users have the option of moving the menus to the top of the screen and seeing their menu options in a drop-down format.  The new look also provides for recently selected items and favorites to be available on a left hand pop-out menu.  This provides for much more usable screen area.  Users can opt for the new menu option or the "classic" look to suit their preference.

In any case, we welcome your feedback and ideas.

Support for new date entry and display types

QuesGen now supports various date display types. Each user can set in his or her profile the way that they would like to see the dates presented. In addition to the standard US format (mm/dd/yyyy), you can select European (dd.mm.yyyy) and International (dd-Mon-yyyy, eg 14-Jun-2013).

Dates can be entered in any format, and will be converted to the desired type. For example, you can enter 6/5 15:00 and the system will convert it to 05-Jun-2011 03:00 pm. Notice that if you don't enter the year, it will default to the current year.

To select the way that you would like to see your date, open up your profile (click on My Profile in the upper right), and near the bottom, you will be able to select.

QuesGen founder, Mike Jarrett presents at the NNHVIP Conference

Michael Jarrett, founder and CEO of QuesGen Systems will be presenting at the National Network of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs (NNHVIP) 3rd Annual National Conference (April 28- 29, 2011) in Oakland, CA.

The mission of The National Network of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs (NNHVIP) is to Strengthen existing hospital-based violence intervention programs and help develop similar programs in communities across the country. The purpose of the conference is to bring together the best and most exciting programs to share knowledge, develop best practices, collaborate on research, affect policy change, and more.  Violence prevention and intervention programs are a powerful way to stop the revolving door of violent injury in our hospitals. Engaging patients in the hospital, during their recovery, is a golden opportunity to change their lives and reduce retaliation and recidivism.

Topics covered at the conference will include:
What Role Do Hospitals Play In Violence Prevention?
Preview of the NNHVIP Best Practices Curriculum for Launching and Sustaining a Program to Break the Cycle of Violence
Engaging in Advocacy & Advancing the NNHVIP Policy Agenda

Mike providing an overview of data management processes in The Wraparound Project, which is run by the San Francisco Injury Prevention Center and provides support to victims of violence at San Francisco General Hospital.  The system was implemented in January 2010 and has been an effective way of managing client flow and providing analysis of outcomes.

For more information on the work done by the National Network of Hospital-based Violence Intervention Programs, see their website at www.nnhvip.org.

Posted by Barbara Maley

QuesGen introduces its clinical research data management community

With the explosion of all of the online community sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.  People today are getting more and more use to accessing information not only online but accessing information instantaneously.

That being said, here at QuesGen Systems we are taking that cue and rolling out our new online user group via "Get Satisfaction".  Get Satisfaction is an online tool QuesGen has selected to host our clinical research data management community of customers.  It's a friendly online environment created to encourage like users to answer each others questions.  This site is managed by the users with the oversight of QuesGen.  The idea is that the more customers using this tool and sharing new ideas on how to improve QuesGen's product and processes the better off all users will be. 

As QuesGen grows and increases it's clinical research data management user base, a tool and community like this is critical to the success of the company.  This will not only help the users but also help QuesGen to better understand the needs of it's customers as well as the clinical research community.

Get Satisfaction - http://getsatisfaction.com/quesgen

Appointments displayed on calendars have flexible durations

If your project uses calendar integration, we now have the ability to create flexible durations or appointments. For example, if the screening appointment is 90 minutes, and follow-up is 45, the durations can be set based on appointment type. If you want to integrate a datetime field with a calendar, please let us know! 

Three Ways to Deal with HIPAA Dates in De-Identified Data Sets

The HIPAA rules say that any date connected to a patient is Protected Health Information (PHI).  If you are working to provide a de-identified dataset, you must develop a method of dealing with date values which are typically collected during research or outcomes tracking.  Here are three ways to handle it, with pros and cons of each.

Random Date Shifting - One approach is to use an automatic date shifting function in the extract.  They way that these work is that an offset value is generated based on a participant key (for example, the Patient Identifier).  RedCap has implemented this, and will allow a number from -1 to -364 to be generated and each participant's date will be modified by that amount of time.

Pros

• This is pretty easy to implement, if your package supports it.  Just indicated that dates should be shifted at extract time
• Since all dates are shifted by the same number of days, the relative durations all stay intact.

Cons

• Since all dates are shifted by up to a year, any changes that may have occured during the study (for example, changes to the screening process or adjustments to the protocol), those all become lost.
• If there is any benefit to comparing earlier participants to later, that can't be done with this approach.
• Data still contains dates, and individuals that receive it may feel that PHI has been shared.  Documentation about how the dates has been obscured must be included.

For many applications, this is an easy-to-implement process and can work well.


Generalizing Dates - Most Institutions Review Boards (IRBs) will accept that a month and year do not constitute enough specificity for a date to be consider PHI.


Pros

• The event period is not lost
• It is obvious that the information is not PHI

Cons

• In most cases, this does not provide enough information about when something occured.  If a follow-up is done seven days, 14 days and 21 days after injury, they could all occur in the same period.
• It may require additional variables or programming to convert the raw data into Month/Year periods.

In some situations, this can be worthwhile.  For example, a DOB could be presented as 05/1970 and that would be adequate for most uses.

Convert Dates to Durations - Rather than store specific dates, calculate durations and provide those.  For example, rather than have HospitalDischargeDate, you could provide HospitalStayDays that would be calculated from Admit and Discharge date.


Pros

• Clearly not PHI, yet preserves the integrity.
• May be easier in doing data analysis since most inquires are looking at durations rather than specific dates.
• Could be combined with a Generalized Date approach (e.g. MonthYear of Injury, TransportDurationHours, ICUDurationDays.

Cons

• Could be a significant amount of work to implement, if the data management application does not provide this automatically.

The QuesGen data management platform supports automatic duration calculations.  Users have requested date shifting functionality and we are considering implementing it.  If you have an opinion about what you would like, please send us an email at support@quesgen.com or leave a comment here.