Case Study - Nottingham University Academic Rheumatology Department

Problem

The Academic Rheumatology department carries out research on people with osteoarthiritis in conjunction with major pharmaceutical companies. The most recent study is on Genetics and Osteoarthiritis Lifestyle (GOAL).

Over 10,000 people are to be interviewed with a 30 page questionnaire over the study period.

The data will be analysed with products such as SPSS and other reporting tools.

The data needs to be available on a database at the sponsor drug company.

Solution

A SCSI-based Windows 2000 server was purchased and connected to the local area network. Also installed was Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database and the Internet Information Server component for the web-based front-end screens.

A database was designed for SQL Server to store the questionnaire information in a normalised and logically ordered fashion.

Questionnaires were designed using Cardiff Teleform to enable scanning and character recognition of the completed forms.

Using iCraft's Composer system, browser-based screens were designed for the server's website, to provide a front-end to the database. This provides view and manual update facitlities to the database.

An ODBC connector was implemented to provide secure access to the database for data analysis and remote connection.

Backup regimes were instituted with a method to provide dataset updates to the drug company, initially by CD. Other options provided are to download the data using FTP or by using the SQL Server replication facility through a secure socket layer over the Internet.

Usage

Completed questionnaires are scanned and verified with the Teleform system.

Once verified, import routines move the captured data into the SQL Server 2000 database.

Data is now available on any browser configured to be able to access it. Because this product is hosted within an internal network, username and password authentication is used. Secure sockets are not required in this environment.

The web-based interface to the data presents a clear representation and order to the collected data. System users may update information with this interface and browse

Data verification is ever prevalent in the system, and makes it difficult to place the 'wrong sort of data' anywhere.

The ODBC connector provides a method for any compliant reporting applications, such as SPSS and other scientific tools as well as Microsoft Office products.

The dataset is published to the drug company at intervals.