The Centre runs field health research across several sites: surveys, community health assessments, and longitudinal studies. I built the systems that got data out of the field and into something researchers could analyse.

Data was collected on paper, carried back to the office, then typed into spreadsheets. Analysis waited on data entry. For time sensitive public health work that is a real cost, and transcription introduced errors that were nearly impossible to catch once the respondent was long gone.

Data from the field became available for analysis in hours rather than weeks, and collecting digitally at the point of contact removed the re-keying step that had been introducing most of the errors.