The Center for Creative Instruction assisted Dr. Gretchen Tietjen, M.D., Professor and Chair of Neurology, Director of MUO Headache Treatment and Research Program, with a research program entitled "The Women's Issues Research Consortium Project: Infrastructure Development and PDA survey pilot project on Domestic Violence and Headache." This project involved patients in headache subspecialty clinics completing a self-administered questionnaire. Rather than a pencil-paper format, the information was collected from patient on handheld palm devices, which allowed for direct entry of data by patients, synchronization of the data over the internet to the central database, and exportation of data to a statistical program for analysis.
The coordinating site was the Medical University of Ohio. Other sites included Swedish Medical Center (Seattle, WA), University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati, OH), University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT) and University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA).
The challenge was to develop the necessary infrastructure for launching such a project amongst investigators at remote sites with limited resources. Pendragon Forms software allowed for the creation of handheld data collection surveys for any Palm OS device without programming. Palm technology is widely used by the medical and lay population, and the surveys are simple enough for patients to fill out with minimal instruction. Handhelds are portable, efficient, and relatively inexpensive and eliminate the need for paper. The Pendragon SyncServer allows for the collection of data from remote sites in a central database over the internet. The database can be analyzed using any statistical program.
This project was funded by the Women's Issues section of the American Headache Society.
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| American Headache Society |
