François
Richard, postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory
for Translational Breast Cancer Research, showcases the use of REDCap for
collecting clinical data and LabCollector for samples metadata. The lab’s research
involves clinical data of patients, tissue samples for which metadata are
collected, and data collated from these samples for genomic and transcriptomic analysis.
Clinical data may be collected using Excel, which is easy to use, but problematic
for versioning, quality checks and traceability. REDCap, whilst time-consuming
to implement, is a better tool for data consistency and traceability and is
used for electronic case report forms (eCRF). It generates automatic codebooks,
handles missing data well, gives real-time feedback on data and good audit
trails. For collecting samples metadata, LabCollector is used, a lab
information management system based on UZ/KU Leuven
Biobank expectations. It also generate
labels and barcodes.