The REDCap consortium: Building an international community of software platform partners

• Published in: Journal of biomedical informatics Vol. 95; p. 103208
• Main Authors: Harris, Paul A., Taylor, Robert, Minor, Brenda L., Elliott, Veida, Fernandez, Michelle, O'Neal, Lindsay, McLeod, Laura, Delacqua, Giovanni, Delacqua, Francesco, Kirby, Jacqueline, Duda, Stephany N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.07.2019
• Subjects: Clinical research; Electronic data capture; Medical informatics; Translational research; Clinical research; Translational research; Electronic data capture; Medical informatics
• ISSN: 1532-0464; 1532-0480; 1532-0480
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jbi.2019.103208

[Display omitted] •The Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) data platform launched in 2004.•The REDCap Consortium is the community of REDCap administrators and organizations.•The REDCap Consortium grew from local to international impact in six phases.•REDCap partners include 3207 organizations in 128 countries as of December 2018.•Our consortium-building lessons should help the research informatics community. The Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) data management platform was developed in 2004 to address an institutional need at Vanderbilt University, then shared with a limited number of adopting sites beginning in 2006. Given bi-directional benefit in early sharing experiments, we created a broader consortium sharing and support model for any academic, non-profit, or government partner wishing to adopt the software. Our sharing framework and consortium-based support model have evolved over time along with the size of the consortium (currently more than 3200 REDCap partners across 128 countries). While the “REDCap Consortium” model represents only one example of how to build and disseminate a software platform, lessons learned from our approach may assist other research institutions seeking to build and disseminate innovative technologies.