Hand-hygiene data collection?

Support
1

Hello everyone!

I am working with a hospital in the area to electronically collect per-unit
hospital data concerning hand hygiene.

Written from scratch, it's just a simple HTML form on the client-side (to be
displayed by any web-capable phone/PDA), and on the server-side, it's just a
bunch of bar graphs and such displaying the per-unit data in a variety of
ways.

I was thinking of "ODK'ing" the software to:

  1. give it a longer lifespan
  2. contribute back to the open-source community
  3. take advantage of the many ODK features available

Do you guys think my use case is a good one for ODK software? It seems
somewhat outside the normal range of stuff, but perhaps I'm just thinking
too much "inside the box."

Any thoughts, comments, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

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2

karl,

welcome to the community. this is the first time i've seen odk used as
a verb. pretty innovative!

i think your use case fits what odk was designed for. if you wanted to
use odk tools as is, you'd have to change your form to an xform (very
easy) and use the native android or j2me clients. you could then push
the data to aggregate (or some other server that could handle http
post of the xml -- including your own).

if you wanted to stay on the web as your client app, it'd be great to
see some web app that could take an xform and generate standard
htm5l/javascript form filling that would work on all browsers. the
data generated would be xforms complaint and be able to sent to the
server. i think there is demand in the community for something like
this.

your server side piece could be useful to a number of groups. for
example, your visualization tools could be rewritten has google
gadgets so others could use them on google spreadsheets. or you'd
support feeding xform data from aggregate to that graphing service to
generate the graphs so others could use that code.

if getting into the technical details of how this would work interests
you, join http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit-developers and we
can begin those discussions with the other developers.

finally, it's really encouraging to hear you considering the lifespan
of your own data collection projects and excited about contributing to
the community. the more folks like you we get, the better.

yaw

··· On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 09:25, Karl Pietrzak wrote: > Hello everyone! > I am working with a hospital in the area to electronically collect per-unit > hospital data concerning hand hygiene. > Written from scratch, it's just a simple HTML form on the client-side (to be > displayed by any web-capable phone/PDA), and on the server-side, it's just a > bunch of bar graphs and such displaying the per-unit data in a variety of > ways. > I was thinking of "ODK'ing" the software to: > > give it a longer lifespan > contribute back to the open-source community > take advantage of the many ODK features available > > Do you guys think my use case is a good one for ODK software? It seems > somewhat outside the normal range of stuff, but perhaps I'm just thinking > too much "inside the box." > Any thoughts, comments, etc. would be greatly appreciated. > Thank you! > > -- > Post: opendatakit@googlegroups.com > Unsubscribe: opendatakit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com > Options: http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit?hl=en >

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3

Hello everyone. Yaw Anowka recommended I post here to get a better idea of
what it would take.

There's more details below, but here are the parts that Yaw pointed out that
I want to get involved in:

  • Writing a client that takes in an XForm and spits out a static XHTML
    page, or a simple web app that creates a web page at runtime based on a
    selected XForm. Is ODK the right "platform" for this, or should I be
    looking at OpenXData or something?
  • Server-side visualization tools. Once the data is stored, I would like
    to provide bar charts, CSV/Excel export, etc.

Could someone point me in the right direction? Am I in the ballpark? Where
should I head next?

Thanks, everyone, and keep up the great work!

··· ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Yaw Anokwa Date: Tue, May 4, 2010 at 12:48 PM Subject: Re: [ODK Community] hand-hygiene data collection? To: opendatakit@googlegroups.com

karl,

welcome to the community. this is the first time i've seen odk used as
a verb. pretty innovative!

i think your use case fits what odk was designed for. if you wanted to
use odk tools as is, you'd have to change your form to an xform (very
easy) and use the native android or j2me clients. you could then push
the data to aggregate (or some other server that could handle http
post of the xml -- including your own).

if you wanted to stay on the web as your client app, it'd be great to
see some web app that could take an xform and generate standard
htm5l/javascript form filling that would work on all browsers. the
data generated would be xforms complaint and be able to sent to the
server. i think there is demand in the community for something like
this.

your server side piece could be useful to a number of groups. for
example, your visualization tools could be rewritten has google
gadgets so others could use them on google spreadsheets. or you'd
support feeding xform data from aggregate to that graphing service to
generate the graphs so others could use that code.

if getting into the technical details of how this would work interests
you, join http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit-developers and we
can begin those discussions with the other developers.

finally, it's really encouraging to hear you considering the lifespan
of your own data collection projects and excited about contributing to
the community. the more folks like you we get, the better.

yaw

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 09:25, Karl Pietrzak kap4020@gmail.com wrote:

Hello everyone!
I am working with a hospital in the area to electronically collect
per-unit
hospital data concerning hand hygiene.
Written from scratch, it's just a simple HTML form on the client-side (to
be
displayed by any web-capable phone/PDA), and on the server-side, it's just
a
bunch of bar graphs and such displaying the per-unit data in a variety of
ways.
I was thinking of "ODK'ing" the software to:

give it a longer lifespan
contribute back to the open-source community
take advantage of the many ODK features available

Do you guys think my use case is a good one for ODK software? It seems
somewhat outside the normal range of stuff, but perhaps I'm just thinking
too much "inside the box."
Any thoughts, comments, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!

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4

odk and openxdata are both xforms based data collection systems. odk
uses android on the client side, openxdata uses j2me. odk has a
variety of servers (appengine, tomcat, python), openxdata is tomcat.
openxdata's server is pretty full featured, ours is getting there.
both systems are designed to talk to each other, but the links haven't
been built yet.

if i had to pick something that would be high value, it'd be a web app
that you can give it an xform and it'd generate a html5/js interaction
application that could be used to fill out that form.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsltforms/ does something similar but
it's not as fast as one would like. i know a couple of groups that
would love this kind of functionality and i don't think they care much
what platform it's built on.

as to how to start, i'd start getting xsltforms to work and see what
if anything can be done to make it go faster...

··· On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 15:50, Karl Pietrzak wrote: > Hello everyone. Yaw Anowka recommended I post here to get a better idea of > what it would take. > There's more details below, but here are the parts that Yaw pointed out that > I want to get involved in: > > Writing a client that takes in an XForm and spits out a static XHTML page, > or a simple web app that creates a web page at runtime based on a selected > XForm. Is ODK the right "platform" for this, or should I be looking at > OpenXData or something? > Server-side visualization tools. Once the data is stored, I would like to > provide bar charts, CSV/Excel export, etc. > > Could someone point me in the right direction? Am I in the ballpark? Where > should I head next? > Thanks, everyone, and keep up the great work! > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Yaw Anokwa > Date: Tue, May 4, 2010 at 12:48 PM > Subject: Re: [ODK Community] hand-hygiene data collection? > To: opendatakit@googlegroups.com > > > karl, > > welcome to the community. this is the first time i've seen odk used as > a verb. pretty innovative! > > i think your use case fits what odk was designed for. if you wanted to > use odk tools as is, you'd have to change your form to an xform (very > easy) and use the native android or j2me clients. you could then push > the data to aggregate (or some other server that could handle http > post of the xml -- including your own). > > if you wanted to stay on the web as your client app, it'd be great to > see some web app that could take an xform and generate standard > htm5l/javascript form filling that would work on all browsers. the > data generated would be xforms complaint and be able to sent to the > server. i think there is demand in the community for something like > this. > > your server side piece could be useful to a number of groups. for > example, your visualization tools could be rewritten has google > gadgets so others could use them on google spreadsheets. or you'd > support feeding xform data from aggregate to that graphing service to > generate the graphs so others could use that code. > > if getting into the technical details of how this would work interests > you, join http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit-developers and we > can begin those discussions with the other developers. > > finally, it's really encouraging to hear you considering the lifespan > of your own data collection projects and excited about contributing to > the community. the more folks like you we get, the better. > > yaw > > On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 09:25, Karl Pietrzak wrote: >> Hello everyone! >> I am working with a hospital in the area to electronically collect >> per-unit >> hospital data concerning hand hygiene. >> Written from scratch, it's just a simple HTML form on the client-side (to >> be >> displayed by any web-capable phone/PDA), and on the server-side, it's just >> a >> bunch of bar graphs and such displaying the per-unit data in a variety of >> ways. >> I was thinking of "ODK'ing" the software to: >> >> give it a longer lifespan >> contribute back to the open-source community >> take advantage of the many ODK features available >> >> Do you guys think my use case is a good one for ODK software? It seems >> somewhat outside the normal range of stuff, but perhaps I'm just thinking >> too much "inside the box." >> Any thoughts, comments, etc. would be greatly appreciated. >> Thank you! >> >> -- >> Post: opendatakit@googlegroups.com >> Unsubscribe: opendatakit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com >> Options: http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit?hl=en >> > > -- > Post: opendatakit@googlegroups.com > Unsubscribe: opendatakit+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com > Options: http://groups.google.com/group/opendatakit?hl=en > >
5

odk and openxdata are both xforms based data collection systems. odk
uses android on the client side, openxdata uses j2me. odk has a
variety of servers (appengine, tomcat, python), openxdata is tomcat.
openxdata's server is pretty full featured, ours is getting there.
both systems are designed to talk to each other, but the links haven't
been built yet.

What's the difference between ODK's server and openxdata's, if I may ask?

if i had to pick something that would be high value, it'd be a web app
that you can give it an xform and it'd generate a html5/js interaction
application that could be used to fill out that form.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsltforms/ does something similar but
it's not as fast as one would like. i know a couple of groups that
would love this kind of functionality and i don't think they care much
what platform it's built on.

as to how to start, i'd start getting xsltforms to work and see what
if anything can be done to make it go faster...

Thanks for the great info, Yaw! That's exactly the kind of thing I was
looking for.

I actually found a few interesting XForms->HTML things (some defunct, some
not):

I'll have to investigate these guys more before choosing one, but XForms
looks like the way foreword for the hospital's hand-hygiene project.

As far as visualization, I'm tilting toward a Google Fusion Tables thing at
the moment. Would that be something ODK would be interested in (I don't
know, ODK Visualize? :-P), or is it outside the scope of the project?

Thanks much, Yaw!

··· On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Yaw Anokwa wrote:
6

at this point, it's probably better for you to download both openxdata
and aggregate and try them out. http://www.openxdata.org/ or
http://open-data-kit.appspot.com also have demos.

as to fusion tables, odk aggregate can stream data into fusion tables
and spreadsheets. so it'd be cool to see if you can build
visualization tools that integrate with fusion tables or spreadsheets.
http://code.google.com/apis/charttools/ is a good place to start.

··· On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 23:14, Karl Pietrzak wrote: > On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Yaw Anokwa wrote: >> >> odk and openxdata are both xforms based data collection systems. odk >> uses android on the client side, openxdata uses j2me. odk has a >> variety of servers (appengine, tomcat, python), openxdata is tomcat. >> openxdata's server is pretty full featured, ours is getting there. >> both systems are designed to talk to each other, but the links haven't >> been built yet. > > What's the difference between ODK's server and openxdata's, if I may ask? > >> >> if i had to pick something that would be high value, it'd be a web app >> that you can give it an xform and it'd generate a html5/js interaction >> application that could be used to fill out that form. >> http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsltforms/ does something similar but >> it's not as fast as one would like. i know a couple of groups that >> would love this kind of functionality and i don't think they care much >> what platform it's built on. >> >> as to how to start, i'd start getting xsltforms to work and see what >> if anything can be done to make it go faster... >> > Thanks for the great info, Yaw! That's exactly the kind of thing I was > looking for. > I actually found a few interesting XForms->HTML things (some defunct, some > not): > > Mozilla Forms (Firefox plugin for XForms; seemingly defunct) > FormsFaces (pure JavaScript/AJAX XForms viewer; no longer in development) > AJAXForms (a Javascript/XHTML frontend; also no longer in development) > xsltforms (like you mentioned) > BetterForms (currently in development, with commercial support, XHTML/AJAX > frontend with deployable WAR; also open-source; looks pretty nice) > Ubiquity Forms (yet another XHTML/Javascript frontend, using YUI; in current > development) > Obean Forms (another open-source with commercial support HTML/Javascript > frontend, it seems, with an open-source WYSIWYG form builder) > > I'll have to investigate these guys more before choosing one, but XForms > looks like the way foreword for the hospital's hand-hygiene project. > As far as visualization, I'm tilting toward a Google Fusion Tables thing at > the moment. Would that be something ODK would be interested in (I don't > know, ODK Visualize? :-P), or is it outside the scope of the project? > Thanks much, Yaw!