Allowing Anonymous Public Access to an Ocean Study from a Website

Ocean supports anonymous public online questionnaires for any Ocean Study. This is particularly useful for initiatives such as patient experience surveys.

There is no fee for creating and using a public URL. However, normal study submission fees will apply (depending on the study tier).

  • Log in to the Ocean Portal. Click "Menu" in the top left corner and select "Studies".
  • Under the "Online Access" heading, enable the "Allow online submissions for this study using a public URL" checkbox.

    A public access URL will be generated which you can host on your own organization/clinic website. Study participants can enter this URL into their web browser (or click on it directly from your own website) to access the study.

  • Click 'Save'.

Notes/Considerations:

  • When a study participant completes your study survey via the public access URL, the "SubmissionSource" column in the study data export will indicate "Public Online Questionnaire". This indicates that the participant completed the study via the public URL.
  • Since study submissions via the public access URL are truly anonymous (i.e., there is no way to identify the patient) Ocean cannot "remember" if a particular patient has completed the study.
    • This means that Form Memory is not supported for anonymous public Ocean Studies.
    • This also means that participant keys cannot be generated for anonymous public Ocean Studies.
  • If you would like to allow public access to an Ocean Study from a website, but you wish to use each study submission to provide both clinical patient care while also anonymously contributing the data of the submission to an Ocean Study with a participant key, you can host your study using a Website Form link (for an additional fee).
    • Your Website Form link would need to be configured to host an initial Ocean eForm which captures the necessary patient demographic information to identify the patient for clinical care purposes and participant key generation. For a participant key to be generated, the following minimum demographics must be captured in your eForm: surname, date of birth, and sex.
      • You may choose to collect additional demographic values for clinic care purposes and to support the ability to import Website Form submissions into the patient chart in your integrated EMR.
    • The initial Ocean eForm must then trigger a secondary eForm configured as an Ocean Study for the participant to complete (using an eForm Action).
    • Once the participant completes both forms, the full responses of both eForms (i.e., patient demographic information + survey responses) would be accessible within the Website Form inboxes of the Ocean Portal. Simultaneously, the participant responses to only the secondary eForm (i.e., the eForm configured as an Ocean Study) would be anonymously contributed to the study data export (with a generated participant key if the aforementioned minimum demographic values were captured in the initial eForm).
      • If the minimum demographic values of surname, date of birth, and sex were not captured within the initial eForm, no participant key will be generated.
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