When using GemsTracker, it helps to understand the meaning assigned to the following terms.

An answer is a single answer to a single question in a filled-in survey, coupled to a respondent through a token.

Appointments are usually imported from external sources, but can be entered by hand as well.

Appointments consist these fields as specified by HL7.

1. Admission time. The start time of the appointment. (Not the moment the patient should be there)
2. Discharge time. Optional.
3. Status. A two letter code: ACtive, COmpleted, ABorted or CAncelled.
4. Admission code. One letter: Ambulatory, Emergency, Field, Home, Inpatient, Short stay, Virtual
5. Attended by. The staff member or department with whom the patient has an appointment.
6. Referred by. Optional, the staff member or department requesting the appointment.
7. Activity. A high level description of the appointment (e.g. Checkup, Operation, Therapy, etc…).
8. Procedure. Describes the effects that the appointment should have on the patient (e.g. more information, specific changes to the body or a general description, e.g. condition improvement).
9. Location. The physical location.
10. Subject. An optional short free text description of the appointment.
11. Comment. A longer field for comments.

The above values are default specified by HL7 and usually different for each specific medical area. Most projects do not use all these fields.

Appointment filter are used to link appointments to specific appointment track fields by selecting these filters in the definition of the appointment track field. (You will only see them once the first filter has been defined in Setup ⇒ Agenda ⇒ Agenda filters.)

There exist multiple types of appointment filters, e.g. filters on appointment activity and procedure and on appointment subject. Filters can be combined in AND and OR filters. Also it has been made easy to create new filters.

GemsTracker has an event systems that allows code to be executed when a survey is displayed, answered or about to be answered. These events allow the administrator to change the display of the answers to a survey, but also to preset some of the answers before the respondent answers the survey and to calculate answers (e.g. BMI values) or to switch later rounds on or off. E.g. to skip a 'Return to Work' survey when the respondent does not work.

Events can be set for a specific survey or for a specific use of that survey in a round of a track. There is also an event class to be called when a track has completed as a whole, e.g. to create a new track depending on the outcome.

While there are some standard event classes, the event system is mostly used with project specific events. Writing a project specific event is easy to do, though it does require some knowledge about programming in PHP.

Groups are security elements that are used to assign page access rights to groups of users. Groups are also used to assign surveys to certain users; e.g. to respondents or general care staff.

A commonly used alternative name for respondents.

Question means a question asked in a survey.

Questions usually have a code name. These code names can be used e.g. to perform calculations on the answers to a survey after answering. E.g. when a survey has questions with the code names WEIGHT, HEIGHT and BMI, then the BMI Calculation Event can be used to automatically calculate the BMI after a survey has been answered.

A reception code is e.g. OK or an error code that signals that all is well or e.g. that a respondent is no longer participating, a track is stopped or a token should not be answered or was answered incorrectly.

A reception has a success code of true or false. By default OK is the only reception code with a success code set to true, but more success codes can be created. A survey needs to have a success code for a token, the track the token belongs to and the respondent the track belongs to in order to be answerable by a respondent or a staff member.

Alternative name for a reception code for a respondent.

Respondents are people about whom or for whom surveys must be answered.

A results is the answer to a single question in a survey, that is deemed to be the result of that survey. These results are stored in GemsTracker for quick display of these results

A round is the use of a survey within a track. A single survey can be presented to the respondent over many rounds, or just once, or not.

In a track with multiple rounds you can specify how the date when a survey should be taken depends on a date from a previous round. The dates used can be an answer to a previous question or a the date that survey was answered, but also e.g. the date when that survey could be answered. you can specify the number of hours, days, weeks, months, etc. to add or subtract to that date.

A source is a source of surveys and answers to those surveys, e.g. a Lime Survey Installation containing one or more surveys.

Staff members are users that can login in GemsTracker and can have special rights to edit and change respondents, answer surveys or change parts of the setup. Typically they can include health care professionals, administrators, data managers, researchers and security auditors.

A survey is a questionnaire in Lime Survey or some other survey source. Surveys are assigned to respondents using one or more rounds in a track.

See round.

A track contains one or more rounds of surveys. Tracks are created in the Track builder in the menu and consist of zero or more fields with track specific data and one or more rounds, each defining a survey to be answered by or for a respondent.

Respondents are assigned to tracks manually by the users or through code written specifically for a project.

A track can have one or more track fields that can contain data that explains the assignment of the track to the respondent. Example fields are a description, some date or a list of choices stating that a track is assigned to e.g. the right side of the respondents body or the left side. Track fields can be mandatory or optional and they can be read-only or editable. All the values entered for track fields are bundled together to form a track description, unless you define the field not to be added to the track description.

The most advanced type of track field is the appointment field. Appointments fields can be automatically filled using Appointment filters. You can even specify the field to automatically create a new track if an appointment matches the filter (and the patient does not have an existing unfinished track of that type).

Appointment fields can also be used to fill other fields, e.g. setting the value of the location or attendant using the corresponding fields from the appointment.

Projects can define their own track field types.

A token is an identification relating a single respondent to a single survey instance for a single round in a track assigned to that respondent.

Tokens have valid from and optional valid until dates that define the period in which that survey can be answered for that respondent. These dates can be edited manually through the interface, but are usually determined by calculation rules set for the token's round in the track editor, specifying the valid from date e.g. through a date answer to an earlier survey in the track or through the valid from or until date of an earlier token or using some other date.