REDCap Security and Privacy Compliance

Created by Julie Ward, Modified on Tue, 29 Apr at 10:04 AM by Julie Ward

REDCap is quite different from most other implementations of secure data collection methods. The mentality is very different. The separation between research data and PII is security driven, as opposed to location driven. With Qualtrics or other survey methods you have to download the data and then separate it into different files. With REDCap, the data is all in one database, but the PII is protected by very a granular permissions and classification structure. Every data field created in RC has the option to be marked as PII, and some types default to that. Then by default RC will protect those fields from being displayed, emailed or downloaded unless you've gone through the permissions and workflow hoops to do so. RC is designed to be HIPAA compliant.

Also note that since we are hosting our own REDCap servers for ORI and Influents, the collected data never resides on any server outside of our network.

In some cases, if further separation of PII is required, it is also possible to create separate projects within RC such that one project is your demographics or recruitment project and then study subjects are linked to separate project only by an ID #. There are projects at ORI using this method.

REDCap also allows us to grant data entry operator permissions to outside users such that the teachers, for instance, could log in and fill out data regarding their students, but not be able to see other data. 

All the methodologies so far in use with REDCap here have been vetted by our IRB. I'm on the IRB currently, and I can tell you that we have had some intense discussions lately about this and related issues. RC is much simpler for us in this respect because the data never resides outside our control, so we already know all the answers to how the data is being collected, transferred, stored, encrypted, etc. 

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