Project Overview
The purpose of the ViewMyVRIC project is to extend the uses of VRIC and meet the needs of new communities external to the RNOH and hospital contexts. The new additions would allow external communities to manipulate and create data visualizations in formats that are easily exportable for their use in presentations, conferences, journal articles or reports or for further analysis in statistics software tools.Background
1. Changes taking place in the National Health Service will impact general practitioners surgeries and the practice of health care professionals. From the experience gained during the VRIC project, we anticipate that the impact of the changes will increase the needs of health communities to collect more field data via mobile devices and collate them with members of surgeries located in the same area or with other external organisations (e.g. research funding bodies or for studies and trials in geographically or thematically distributed areas).
2. ViewMyVRIC project extends the uses of VRIC to meet the needs of those communities external to hospital-based research centres.
3. The extension tools will allow communities to interact with sections of VRIC that are specifically linked to data handling, facilitating the interaction with the VRE. Users will then be able to manipulate data from VRIC and/or collect data through mobile devices, import them back into VRIC, and visualize, collate, and discuss the outcomes. In addition, the tools will allow the creation of easily exportable data files for use in presentations, conferences, journal articles, or reports, or for further analysis in statistical software.
Aims of the project
To develop an alternate access to VRIC where users interact with the data manipulation features of the environment. To develop and make available easy-to-use visualisation tools for doctors and healthcare professionals. These are not the traditional research clinicians based at clinical research centres; as is the case for current VRIC users. Allow non-research medics and health care professionals to export data files from within VRIC in different standard formats to be used in presentations, conferences, journal articles, or reports, or for further analysis in statistical software. To allow the visualisation tools within VRIC to be used for the analysis of user behaviour within the VRE.
Deliverables
Mobile data collecting and displaying tool. 
The tool will connect and work with VRIC data forms. The data forms from VRIC are rendered and displayed on mobiles. Healthcare professionals collect data by completing these forms through mobile devices and then sending the data back to and synchronizing with VRIC, where the data can then be exported, analyzed, discussed, and visualized.
Exporting data files tool: This tool will export the data from the VRIC database or from the VRIC repository in different standard formats including XML, CSV, or text. With users’ authorization, the exported file then can be imported into another system for further research or be directly sent to other health care professionals. The tool is connected to the form builder tool (previously built as an earlier extension VRIC), which allows users to create their own data forms, input their data, and then export it.
Visualisation tool: A data visualisation tool will be built for generating scatter plot or graphs such as line charts and bar charts to support the task of data analysis. In addition, some other, now standard, data visualization tools will be introduced for the display of data, links, and the behaviour of VRE users. For example, the size of data blocks displayed will be defined by their popularity, and the most visited sections of the Website will be highlighted using a colour-scheme to provide useful information on areas of improvement for the Website. Visualisation tools will be valuable for the end-user community as well as the ECS team.
Reports: A final report regarding the effectiveness, applicability, and usability of the tools will be produced to contribute to the development of the VRE community.
