Ptracker is a set of integrated OpenACS packages that together with the underlying OpenACS framework have been used to develop many clinical trial data management systems.

The three primary components of pTracker are:

• Subject manager- study roster for accuring participants or managing the objects of a specific workflow. In some instances, human participants are not the objects that are modeled by a formal workflow.
• Workflow engine and authoring user interface. This is a user interface to the OpenACS finite state machine-based workflow engine. Using this UI we can build very complex workflows.
• Case Report Form builder - The CTRL-Surveys application is a mature and flexible form builder. CTRL-Surveys supports dynamic banching, item grouping, and item cloning. It generates reports and maintains an XML description of all data elements in a published form.

In the image to the right several screen shots of the three main components of pTracker are shown.  At the top is a screen shot image of the subject manager. Subject are usually patients participating in a clincial trial or research study. However, in some studies the subjects could be packages of biomaterials that must be shipped to a central processing center (see IPBS case study). In any case, the subject manager lists the the OpenACS objects that will be moved through a workflow.

A sample workflow is show on the top right of the image on the right.

Workflows are created using a specific user interface shown inthe middle portion on the right.

At the bottom of the image on the right are samples of the Case Report Form builder. This component is based on the CTRL Surveys package.