WEPI

FAQ

• What is Wepi?

  It is web-based survey creation tool to easily create, distribute, and administer on-line questionnaires. It is based on secure Internet standards and the ASIP certified Voozanoo platform. It can also be used on an Android smartphone or tablet via the Open Data Kit application for off-line form completion.

• Who is behind Wepi ?

  Wepi is a product of EpiConcept, a Paris-based company specialising in epidemiology and public health information systems since 1996. See also the section About Wepi.

• Where is the data stored? Is the data secure?

  The data is stored in France in a highly secured data center. Wepi has been developed on EpiConcept’s Voozanoo framework. Since 11 May 2012, EpiConcept’s Voozanoo has been certified by the Ministry of Health through the ASIP Santé agency for hosting personal health data. This agreement which is held by less than 96 French organisations/companies requires specific technical action policies and strong security.

• Am I automatically covered by the garanties that are brought through the “Personal health data host” ASIP status of Voozanoo?

  No. Although Wepi is hosted on an identicle secure platform as that used for EpiConcept’s customers to host personla health data, it is required to have a signed contract with EpiConcept in order to benefit from the inherent guarenties of the ASIP certification.

• Is is possible to get the Wepi application hosted on our internal servers for our orgnisation ?

  This would require some development effort by EpiConcept but a contract could be made to do this work. For example, you could have "https://wepi.company.org". Please contact us to discuss this possibility (info@wepi.org)

• Are all the collected data available to every team member of a project?

  No. As the creator of a questionnaire, only you have access to read, modify, or delete data collected your team. Each member of your team can only view, modify, and delete the data that they have collected and submitted.

• What are the technologies used in WEPI?

  WEPI is based on standard web technologies: Linux, MySQL, JavaScript, Json, Ajax, PHP and HTML5.

• Why did we make Wepi?

  We wanted to cereation a simple tool that would allow epidemiologists at EpiConcept to easily create and distribute on-line questionnaires. Very quickly, the question came, “Why not let this tool be used by other epidemiologists and public health professionals?” There was not reason not to. In a world where we are drowning in marketing hype about making your organisation quicker and better while paying less, we shy away from this sort of “selling”. So what can we do? Some people have never heard of EpiConcept and we thought that Wepi could be a nice embassador for us. If health professionals find Wepi useful, that makes us happy. And if these people find out that EpiConcept has created larger IT solutions for other organisations, perhaps they will knock on our door when they have a more complex health IT need. So if you have some plans for a health IT project, please don’t hesitate to contact us. If that is not the case currently, that’s OK, just let others know about Wepi and its usefulness for you, and they can benefit from it as well as get to know EpiConcept.

• How many questionnaires/records am I allowed to create?

  There is not a limit to the number of questionnaires and records you can create with Wepi.

• How can I create a questionnaire for use on a smartphone or tablet?

  It is possible to use Wepi via the web browser on your device of course, but there is also a native Android application called ODK Collect that can be used for off-line needs. In this application’s settings, you simply point it to the Wepi server and give your account username and password to have access to your questionnaires for completion on the device. The form’s data are stored on the device. To send the questionnaire responses back to the Wepi server, once needs to have an internet connection. There is a short “How to” sheet available in the Help section of Wepi which explains step-by-step how to set up “mobile” questionnaires.

• What is Open Data Kit?

  It is a set of open source applications created by the Univesity of Washington in partnership with Google. The applications objectives are to create, store, and retreive data by using Android devices data collection. EpiConcept is very thankful to the Open Data Kit team for making the tools available to add this mobile part of the data collection that was previously missing from the Wepi solution. You can find out more about Open Data Kit at www.opendatakit.org.

• When should I use Wepi and when should I use Voozanoo?

  If you are not sure whether to use Wepi or Voozanoo for your next information collection project, consider the following.

  Wepi was designed to be used by non-technical people. As such, we didn’t want to make it complicated with lots of functions -- therefore it will necessarily have limits. Wepi allows you to create a questionnaire and distribute it (make it available via the Internet or on smartphones or tablets as an application) to many people, or to have a handfull of people fill it in multiple times, creating many records. It is ideal for a case report form or registering people to be part of a group or any “one-shot” data collection activity. It allows you to collect information about something over one determined time period, for exemple, a disease outbreak, collecting specimens, logging auto accidents, collecting opinions or votes, or other cases of an “event”. These are acticvities where you will not need to go back to the event and add new information later.

  If you need to collect information over time on an individual, an animal, a plant, or some entity subject to change over time, Wepi would not be the right tool. Often, one first wants to enter information about an entity, such as its name, date of birth, sex, or other characteristics that identify this entity, a sort of initial registration that doesn’t change. Then, every day or week or other time period, one will want to collect changing status information about one of those particular entities. For example, in patient care, it might be important to save the patient’s blood pressure, pulse, and weight information. This can be considered as monitoring, surveillance, or follow up over time. Thus, one can see that the values taken over time need a specific database structure which is known as a relational database. Voozanoo allows you to make this kind of information system, Wepi does not.