The REDCap project was developed to provide scientific research teams intuitive and reusable tools for collecting, storing and disseminating project-specific clinical and translational research data. The following key features were identified as critical components for supporting research projects: 1) collaborative access to data across academic departments and institutions; 2) user authentication and role-based security; 3) intuitive electronic case report forms (CRFs); 4) real-time data validation, integrity checks and other mechanisms for ensuring data quality (e.g. double-data entry options); 5) data attribution and audit capabilities; 6) protocol document storage and sharing; 7) central data storage and backups; 8) data export functions for common statistical packages; and 9) data import functions to facilitate bulk import of data from other systems. Given the quantity and diversity of research projects within academic medical centers, we also determined two additional critical features for the REDCap project: 10) a software generation cycle sufficiently fast to accommodate multiple concurrent projects without the need for custom project-specific programming; and 11) a model capable of meeting disparate data collection needs of projects across a wide array of scientific disciplines.
