Public health surveillance · Vanderbilt University (REDCap Consortium)
REDCap
Secure web application for building surveys and research databases, distributed free to consortium member institutions.
REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a browser-based application for designing surveys and structured databases used in clinical research, public health surveillance, and other data-collection projects. Originally built at Vanderbilt University, it is distributed not as a commercial product but through the REDCap Consortium: any non-profit or government institution can join at no license cost, receive the codebase, and self-host its own instance for its researchers, under a standard end-user agreement that prohibits reselling or redistributing the software. Each member institution operates and supports its own REDCap installation, which is why deployments vary in scale from a single research group to an institution-wide platform. Features include drag-and-drop form building, branching logic, longitudinal data collection, audit trails, and export to common statistical packages, under a security model designed to meet HIPAA and research-compliance requirements. It is widely used for public-health registries, cohort studies, and outbreak data collection.
At a glance
| Vendor | Vanderbilt University (REDCap Consortium) |
|---|---|
| Pricing model | Free |
| Free tier | Yes |
| Deployment | Self-hosted |
| Open source | No |
| Best for | Non-profit and academic institutions needing a self-hosted, no-license-fee platform for research and surveillance data collection. |
Pricing
Free to non-profit and government institutions that join the REDCap Consortium and self-host; not sold commercially or per seat.
Checked on the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026: no prices are published. Expect to be quoted.
Features
- Drag-and-drop survey and form builder
- Branching logic and skip patterns
- Longitudinal and repeating data collection
- Audit trails and role-based access
- Export to SAS, SPSS, R, and Stata
- Consortium-based institutional distribution model
- Self-hosted deployment by each member institution
Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026