Redcap vs commcare for survey

[Tewelde Aregawi]

Dear all

I am just wondering what the difference b/n commcare and redcap is?  Does redcap support all commcare functionalies? I know commcare very well but not redcap and my staff are pushing me to use redcap?

Your advice is highly appreciated.

Best,

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Tewelde Aregawi

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[Ameera Hamid]

HI Tewelde,

choosing between REDCap and CommCare will depend very much on the type of apps you require in your project.  Both REDCap and Commcare are useful data collection kits, that support mobile functionality and offline usage. 

REDCap is developed by Vandebijlt University to support research methodology and data collection.  Like CommCare it allows you to design survey instruments (including longitudinal survey instruments) with multiple question types.  I'll try to highlight the differences between REDCap and CommCare by discussing groups of features.

Pricing;

REDCap is open source and free to download for individual or institutional hosting.  There are no package prices for users, but you will need to invest in a team and equipment to host the software on a server, run the platform updates, administrate the platform and build custom plugins for features that aren't naturally available on the software (this they make fairly easy and provide guides on how to build custom plugins for extra functionality - all you need is a fair knowledge of PHP)

Platforms;

REDCap has both a web application that can be used on desktops and laptops and mobile applications for both android and iOS devices.  Note that some question types may not work on the mobile platforms (for example the dropdown list with medical nomenclature)

Question Types;

REDCap does not support GPS capture yet.  They do however have a file upload feature which allows you to upload documents and images.  Additionally they allow searchable drop down list that allow you to choose more than one option.  they have built in databases to add searchable drop down lists for medical nomenclature (the medical databases they have are ICD 10, SnowMedCT, MEDRA, HL7).  You are able to carry out calculations with questions and display conditions, however the complexity of calculations and display conditions are limited, ie., you are mostly able to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, date difference and if functions, but other functions like count, coalesce, concat are not available.  REDCap can only separate groups of questions by applying section headers and cannot perform repeat groups like Commcare.  For surveys that use Lickert scales, REDCap has a nice functionality called matrix questions that allow you to do this.

Exports;

REDCap has strong export functions - allowing you to create custom exports of your surveys and data collection instruments.  additionally you can apply filters to to questions in the survey before exporting to excel.  REDCap allows export to excel, in CSV, xml and also directly into statistical packages such as SPSS, SASS, STATA, and R statistical programs.  Excel exports can be exported using the raw data or the question labels.  Like CommCare it allows you to de-identify fields, but cannot allow you to add meta tags into the exports like CommCare (cannot track device IMEI no, data capturer - this can be viewed on the project system however).

REDCap does not have a "reports' feature like CommCare does to track the activity of your mobile users - this is quite limited in REDCap.  But does allow you to create types of users and assign rights and permissions to functions on the app and forms on the app (thus you can have a user group that is only able to accees the registration form, but none of the other forms).

Case management:

REDCap is not able to create child and grandchild cases.

Application building;

REDCap does hve a feature for you to run data quality checks (see if all forms and surveys have been completed correctly, but is not quite as intuitive as Commcare in picking up build errors.

REDCap's application building works a little differently from CommCare in that you have two stages; Development and production.  While in development you are able to make as many changes to the application as you want (it is recommended that no actual data collection is done in development mode).  Once happy with your application , it can be moved to production, where you are given the option to erase test data entered in development mode.  Once in production, if you would like to make changes to the question types of the form you will need the system administrator to approve changes - this is to make sure the data already collected in the project may not be significantly affected.

Like CommCare you are able to generate a data dictionary of your application (Application summary) and also create an application using a excel import function.

Data Collection;

REDCap allows you to send out surveys to users outside of the app via a link.  You are also able to schedule forms and surveys to be completed at specific times.

Overall;

REDCap was built with research data collection in mind whereas CommCare is quite well adapted for community health outreach type of projects.  I would recommend looking at the functionality you need and whether REDCap of Commcare is more suited.  if your application require many calculated fields and conditions and workflows, Commcare is better suited.  

Hope this was useful.

Feel free to skype me (ameera.hamid) if you have any other questions about REDCap 

Kindly,

Ameera

REDCap is open source and allows you to build plugins (if you have a fair knowledge of PHP) for additional funtionalities.  

[Tewelde Aregawi]

Deat Ameera

Thanks for your prompt and detailed response.One of the doubts they have in commcare is weather commcare works offline data export like redcap and odk collect.What if there is no internet at the middle of the survey.do we have another mechanism to export the data from the Mobile commcare Odk? That is the main treat for them.

Best,

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[Clayton Sims]

Hi Tewelde,

CommCare is designed as an offline first mobile application which can both collect data offline and track longitudinal data from that survey through a "case management" mechanism without connecting to a survey.

There are options for offline data management through commcare (an SD card dump, and a Wifi Direct data sharing tool), but you should be aware that they are not designed for offline exports, but rather designed to facilitate moving data from one device to another in order to submit that data to a server from the other device. You can access the records locally after a dump using one of those tools, but they will be raw XML documents rather than a tabular export like you could get from our server.

Since commcare is designed to track and manage shared data (cases) offline rather than perform "one-time" survey collection, it's vital to our data model for data to make it back to our end server at some point in the process to update the shared data model on the server. 

If you are looking for a tool which can collect single-use data and export the data in a tabular format for analysis completely offline without needing to follow up on those households/patients/etc again in the future ODK would be a better fit for your needs.

-Clayton

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Tewelde Aregawi

ICT Expert

MVP(MDE)

Tigray/Hawzein

Mobile   +251933730215

Skype : tewelde.aregawi1

Face Book : tewelde aregawi

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