Building a POCDART Project

Setting up the PoCDART Toolkit

The complete POCDART toolkit is composed of three main components:

REDCap - Survey design, storage
R & Shiny Server - data processing, automation, and Dashboard generation
Drupal 8 - User management, Dashboard presentation

This document will help you setup and deploy a POCDART instance.

PoCDART Resources

PoCDart Resources can be found on our Github Repository.

REDCap Configuration & Setup

To setup a PoCDART Project, we suggest starting with the XML template in the POCDART Git Repository. It will supply you with a suggested event setup, basic instruments, and event assignations. If you choose to manually create a project, it will need the following:

Longitudinal setup with 3 arms
A demographic/patient specific information instrument
Two instruments to begin and end your assessments, as well as an extra instrument to begin the discharge assessment
An Expiration instrument for when the patient misses an assessment

If using a custom instrument not already available through PoCDART, please read the Instrument Templating section.

After your project is created, you will need to enable surveys and customize the settings as desired. PoCDART comes with an included set of hooks and CSS that can be utilized if desired, which we've found to streamline the experience when the assessments are being taken on a tablet or mobile device. More information about the PoCDART UX and how to use it can be found on the right.

Finally, generate an API key with import and export settings and enable the DETs (if using them).

Shiny Server configuration & setup

If you have not already installed an instance of Shiny Server, please follow the instructions here: R Shiny Server

Once intalled, copy the contents of the PoCDART Git Repository to a project specific folder in your shiny server.

Example Directory: /srv/shiny-server/<project>/

Once the files are all in place, you can begin customizing your PoCDART for your REDCap project. These instructions can be found in the Designing with the UX and Customizing PoCDART pages.

Drupal configuration & setup

We utilize Drupal 8 in order to make PoCDART available to users due to its open source and highly modular nature, but any preferred web hosting services could be utilized. This is because once PoCDART has been customized and successfully runs on your shiny server, embedding it is as simple as adding the following HTML to your website:

This setup will discuss some of the extensions we utilize in Drupal 8 for security, user management, etc.

User Management:

PHP Filter - Allows us to have PHP in our nodes. This allows us to send user information to POCDART, perform customization based on user, and a host of other server-side mechanics

Permission by Term - Allows us to host multiple Dashboards and project relevant nodes, but only present nodes relevant to the user.

Automated Logout - Force users to logout after a specific

Other Extensions

Webform - Allows you to let users create tickets

Simple Redirect - Redirects users to a specific page after login

LDAP Authentication - If you already have an LDAP system setup, this allows you to utilize it for user authentication and login