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FAQ

What is dotbase?

dotbase was developed to let everyone build their digital health solution intuitively and on-demand. By always ensuring a machine-readable format, it is the future-proof foundation for embedding a range of tools like documentation systems or clinical-decision support.
Find out more in our docs.

Differences to traditional hospital information systems

Conventional Hospital information systems (HIS) are designed to manage most healthcare-related data from a hospital in one monolithic system.
This includes collecting, storing, and transmitting patients' medical records, but also hospital operational functions such as scheduling functions (e.g., operations, etc.), bed management, human resource management, and often financial stuff (analytics, billing).
Today there are several commercial HIS in use, for example, i.s.h.med ("SAP"), Epic Systems or Orbis.

dotbase is built from the start with the idea that such monolithic data storage will be a thing of the past.
dotbase instead offers direct but user-friendly interactions with the medical data needed on demand.
This works with a data mesh in the background, as well as with a national electronic patient record. For now, however, because the current systems lack interoperability and data fluidity, dotbase operates also well as a frontend within existing hospital information systems thanks to its adapters and automated mapping to interoperable data standards.
Currently, our development is focused on all content that is directly related to patients, such as visit documentation, diagnosis and therapy documentation, patient-reported outcomes and remote monitoring.

Why should I use it as a physician?

In the physician's everyday work, software and documentation are usually rather a hindrance than assistance in their work. This is especially frustrating because, in other areas, software often simplifies things for us.
dotbase stems from exactly this experience. Use it to document, read, search, receive and analyze information on and from patients in real-time. We use it for this ourselves daily in our neurological outpatient clinic and on the ward.

Because everybody's routine and every patient interaction are different, dotbase provides a high degree of flexibility and customizability.
Another frustrating thing is that we document so much, but have a hard time finding or evaluating because it is unformatted, illegible, spread out, and/or not machine-readable. That's why dotbase is based on FHIR, which brings a high level of interoperability and a machine-readable dataset. Find out more about FHIR in English or in German.

dotbase is built with a modern software stack, and software engineers, designers and researching clinicians give input into the development. This ensures:

  • unrestricted adaptability to your requirements without breaking usability or interoperability.
  • solving the real needs within a technically clean and solid construct.

Why should I use it as a researcher?

Valuable data is constantly being generated in the routine treatment of patients. Most times, especially in complex scenarios (e.g. deep brain stimulation), this data is not stored in an analyzable format. If an evaluation of this data is planned, it often has to be done manually. At the same time, there are often major problems with contemporary data protection, especially concerning the separation of identifying, clinical and study data.

dotbase is developed within a large research group to solve exactly these problems. To the person entering data in their routine care, a high degree of customizability is offered, but this structuring is always mirrored on the data level to keep it analyzable and in accordance to data privacy regulations and patient consent. We store everything in FHIR and there is already a lot of documentation on how to use FHIR with R, Phyton, SPSS & SAS. Also, check out this section on data export

Find out more about our own research and how we use dotbase to capture highly complex data in routine care under movebase.de.

Difference between dotbase and REDCap?

REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a software designed for research databases. It is available at no charge to institutional partners. We believe REDCap is a highly valuable tool for capturing data in clinical studies and trials as an electronic Case Report Form (eCRF).

dotbase is an electronic health record system, built for use in the daily clinical routine.
While recording study data within dotbase is possible, it is not built primarily as an eCRF.
If you are recording study data without any need for data from the clinical routine we recommend REDCap.

How do I export my data from dotbase?

dotbase is using FHIR to store all data. Exporting data is therefore pretty easy.
dotbase is designed to facilitate the development of data-driven technology for healthcare, such as clinical decision support. We recommend using Phyton for a simple entry into real-time prototyping and development with dotbase.
We also offer tools to export specific data directly into flatted tables in .csv format. Check our docs on how to use these methods.

How do I pronounce dotbase?

[dɒt beɪs].

How do I write dotbase?

Just write "dotbase".
dot.base may also be used occasionally as a synonym, and when used in code or other environments where "dotbase" was not available, a hyphen "-" -> "dot-base" is sometimes used.

What about MDR certification and is dotbase certified?

dotbase is currently classified as a hospital information system. According to the EU MDR, hospital information systems aren’t per se qualified as medical devices.
But the more we fill dotbase with helpful medical templates and analytics, offer possibilities to you to build your own templates and communicate with patients directly via our app, the more we move into this space.

We do three things here to be future-proof:

  • We have already integrated quality assurance measures and automated testing into our development pipelines
  • We split up our software in module-like microservices and medical content so that you can use parts of dotbase already in the routine and add advanced content later on
  • We are working with a consulting company on the MDR certification of the extending modules (this will take some while as the notified bodies are currently overwhelmed)

We also foster an open ecosystem here, so you may easily share your templates with others and we factor this into the regulatory strategy.

Can I get commercial support?

We are currently not a company but are working on a way to offer support for implementing and running dotbase in your environment.
Just contact us here

What's on the roadmap?

First we want to further develop dotbase so it fully supports any outpatient clinic as the main system.
We also are building out more medical content (like templates and guidelines for neurologic diseases and corresponding PROs) and ways to share these openly.
We also have more no-code tools in the work for you to create your medical content and easily customize dotbase to your own needs.
If you have a feature request open an issue on Github or send a quick message to describe what you need.

How can I get involved?

First off, thank you for considering contributing to dotbase! It's people like you that make dotbase a great project.

You can contribute to dotbase in many different ways. From extending the documentation, writing bug reports or even code to enhance the project itself.
Check our docs and Github or send a quick message to describe what you want to do.

We'd also love to hear from you if you have software or system of your own and are interested in collaborating.