Start collecting data you can actually analyze.
A database built correctly before enrollment opens saves months of cleaning at the end of your study, and keeps you out of trouble with your IRB and your sponsor along the way.
That is what HESTIA does. The Health Care Evaluation Systems and Technology Informatics Archive is USC's support service for REDCap databases and clinical trial data management. We build the database, run the data operations behind clinical trials, and administer the REDCap platform for different departments across the university.
We work with USC faculty, staff, and student investigators on studies of any size, from a small cross-sectional survey to a multi-site longitudinal trial with randomization and monthly reporting. Come to us at any stage: writing data collection into a grant proposal, building the database before enrollment opens, training a study team, or repairing a project already in the field.
Our Services
We design and build REDCap projects, from a first draft instrument to a database ready to collect data.
- Surveys, forms, and instruments, including paper forms and validated measures converted into REDCap instruments
- Branching logic, calculated fields, skip patterns, and validation rules
- Longitudinal and event-based designs, including repeating instruments
- User roles, data access groups, and permissions for multi-site or multi-clinician teams
- Automated survey invitations, scheduled reminders, and participant-specific survey links
- Randomization and eConsent setup
- Projects handling PHI, reviewed against IRB and HIPAA requirements before launch
- Reports, exports, and dashboards
- Data imports, API integrations, and piping data between projects
- Troubleshooting and repair for projects already collecting data
Ongoing data management for funded clinical trials, including multi-site studies.
- Case report forms, patient-reported outcome measures, and full CRF libraries
- Data dictionary development and version control across protocol revisions
- Randomization and allocation tracking
- Treatment and assessment fidelity logs, daily treatment logs, and protocol deviation forms
- Automated monthly reporting for enrollment, safety, and data quality
- Data management plans written to sponsor and NIH requirements
- Site onboarding and user access management as sites open and close
Training built around your own project, for the people who will use it.
- Study team training for clinicians, coordinators, and data entry staff
- Site initiation visit training and run sheets for multi-site trials
- Quick reference handouts and written guides specific to your project
- Working sessions using your team's own instruments and data
- Consultation on data collection plans, database structure, and documentation during grant preparation
HESTIA administers the REDCap platform at USC.
- Moving projects from development into production, and reviewing draft changes to live studies
- User rights, roles, and data access group assignments on production projects
- Adding external collaborators to a project
- API tokens for programmatic access to your own project data
- External module review and activation, including cross-project piping, survey tools, and MyCap
- Enabling project features such as double data entry
- Project settings, project folders, and record ownership questions
- Survey delivery and email troubleshooting
- Answers to short "how do I" questions about REDCap
Log into REDCap at redcap.research.sc.edu using your USC email address and password. USC faculty, staff, and students do not
need to request an account.
Collaborators outside USC need a USC guest account, requested through the sponsoring
department's HR office.
How to Get Started
Send a short description of your project to snemati@mailbox.sc.edu.
1. Tell us what the study collects, when data collection starts, and whether a REDCap
project already exists.
2. We meet to scope the work and send you a written estimate of hours.
3. You approve the estimate with a valid account number, and we build.
New requests are answered within three business days. REDCap support is an allowable, budgetable cost on grants, and HESTIA can provide a justification letter for your proposal.