Background

GemsTracker was originally used as a respondent tracking system for clinical trials and population studies at the department of Public Health. Within the department a growing demand was seen for health research during the healthcare process (Research at the workplace). In collaboration with the Department of Plastic Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine of Erasmus MC and the Xpert Clinic the development of GemsTracker started. With funding from the Coolsingel Foundation the existing software could be made more suitable for use in research and qualityregistrations in the healthcare process.

Open source

Initially GemsTracker was designed as an extension to the functionality of the questionnaire package LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey is an open source, web-based application in which questionnaires can be built, completed, processed and distributed (www.limesurvey.org). GemsTracker is now an independent system which can communicate with different questionnaire systems (including LimeSurvey). In September 2011, the software was published (new BSD licence) in the open source community to promote the transparency of code, continuous improvement of the quality and wide availability at a low cost to healthcare providers and research institutions.

Usage

GemsTracker has been primarily used for scientific research (clinical or population research). Examples include: Pathway terminal phase, Care for the elderly, Cardiac rehabilitation, Cannabis use, Hand and Wrist Surgery, Pain treatment.

Recently, a modified version of Gemstracker has also been implemented at Equipezorgbedrijven as a quality registration system. The system monitors changes in health in different patient groups (e.g. flebology, cosmetic surgery, cosmetic dermatology, skin oncology, proctologist, hand en wrist surgery).