Caution! This message was sent from outside the University of Manitoba.
Hello. I'm contemplating Epidata as a tool for an ongoing project of operational data entry (monthly volumes/census of different types of clinic visits at a facility) in which several different staff members would be entering the data relevant to their section of the clinic (TB, STD, etc.) The facility does not have an electronic medical record, or any other platform from which these data could be extracted in automated fashion. Currently each staff member is typing numbers into a massive shared spreadsheet on their networK (ugh!).
If I set up a single, shared, Epidata .rec file in that same network location, could several staff members be editing it (adding records) simultaneously? It would be rare by sheer chance, but it could happen. No two staffers would ever be editing the same existing record.
Alternatively, if each staffer had their own .rec file pertaining to their activities, I suppose I could, each month, APPEND them into my "working" total file, from which I would derive my summaries (probably by exporting and running some R code)?
Advice and suggestions welcome.
Thanks.
--Chris Ryan Binghamton, NY, US