OpenClinica Insight makes it easy to ask questions of your clinical and operational data and visualize answers via interactive reports and dashboards. Once Insight is activated for your study, contact support@openclinica.com for a demo on how to get the best insights into your data.

Introduction

OpenClinica Insight – What could you do with intelligent reporting from OpenClinica, LLC on Vimeo.

Insight is designed to be intuitive and self-documenting. Here are a few pointers to get you started…

Do I Have Insight?

OpenClinica Insight is available for OpenClinica 3 Enterprise and OpenClinica 4. It is an add-on module, so you may have it if your organization has purchased it. It lives at a separate URL and requires a separate login from your main OpenClinica environment. Contact your OpenClinica administrator to get access to your Insight domain or click here.

How do I Get Started?

Insight includes some out-of-the-box reports and visual tools for creating reports and dashboards that allow you to explore your data without a lot of hassle.

Here are a few key concepts to help you out:

  • Reports in Insight are called Questions. A Question can be built using the question builder, or written in SQL. The point and click question builder provides tools for filtering, aggregation, grouping, and more. You can also decide if you’d like to see the results as a table, chart, map, etc. When done, save the Question so others can use it and you can come back to it later.
  • Dashboards are pages that display the results of several questions at once. Dashboards can be set up with filters so you can look at different slices of your data easily. You can drill down into a graph or table for more details on the results.
  • Pulses and Alerts will send you and colleagues the results of a Question, on a schedule or when triggered by a change in the data.
  • Data Reference makes it easy to explore your data by providing descriptions of tables and columns. Some of these descriptions are part of Insight itself, while others are generated from your study metadata. These descriptions can be customized and added to as needed by your Insight administrator.

The Insight user interface runs on software called Metabase. Access the Metabase User Guide for details on how to create questions, set up alerts, manage people and permissions, as well as any other details you would like to know about using the Metabase software. After the page opens, use the Search field to find a specific topic or navigate using the topics in the Table of Contents. Use the Metabase User Guide for any information on using the Insight user interface as this is the software program that is used to run it.

Where do my Data Come from?

The foundation of OpenClinica Insight is a data warehouse that is generated from your OpenClinica transactional database. Built with PostgreSQL and Python, it provides:

  • Each OpenClinica study environment as a schema
  • Each CRF/Item Group as a table, with items as columns
  • All non-removed data, plus audit logs for all data
  • Transactional data remodeled for optimal reporting via a constellation data model
  • Snapshot updates of data (refresh rate is hourly and can be tuned higher / lower if desired)

What Else can Insight Help me do?

You can share and embed your questions and dashboards, or integrate Insight with your existing backend toolchains and reporting platforms. Sharing and embedding options are accessible through the user interface. Contact us if you’d like to access the data warehouse backend directly or use the Metabase API.

Take a deeper dive into Insight by reviewing the slides to see how you can track enrollment, monitor adverse events, and identify missing forms. The slides also describe Insight’s data model, architecture, and advanced features of the question builder. A one-hour long webinar recording is also available.

Tell Insight What You Want to See, and Take Control of How You See it on your Dashboard:

  • Display responses to multiple questions at once
  • Arrange your dashboard on a grid
  • Resize and place responses where you want
  • Filter one, some, or all questions at once

Insight Also Allows You to: 

  • Reference your data
  • Build reports using an easy question-building interface
  • Write SQL queries
  • Alert sponsors, monitors, and/or sites of important milestones or data concerns
  • Assign permissions
  • Access via API
  • Automate data retrieval from Insight
    • Results for existing questions
    • Results for ad-hoc SQL queries
    • Return as json, csv, or Excel (xlsx)
    • Automate object creation, setup, or any UI action

Embed Insight Objects in Another App

  • Embed a dashboard or question in another app
  • Either use public link, or use parameter controls
  • Parameter controls:
    • Disabled: Nobody can edit, default value used
    • Editable: Users can adjust them
    • Locked: Set and signed by the embedding application