This version of CTcue contains a number of new functionalities, improvements and various bug fixes. Below you will first find a brief overview. Below that, you can read the extended release notes with more detail about some of the main changes in this version.
Features
- Every user can now enable data validation features. This allows for filtering in the validation table. For example on multiple choice questions for patients with results to a particular answer. In addition, it allows you to validate question results. Default labels are ‘pending’ and ‘valid’, but you can customize the labels and add your own.
Improvements
- The login page has been re-designed
- When the app get's updated, we now show a notification when you log in
- Project can now have tags. Tags can only be created by admins but can be applied to a project by any user with access to its settings
- There is now an indicator in the logo if the application runs on an acceptance server
- In the admin user overview, a clock icon is shown for accounts that are about to expire or have expired.
- In the admin project overview, a calendar icon is shown for projects that have enabled scheduled search and/or export. You can also filter for projects with an active schedule.
- As an admin viewing projects that aren't your own, there is a 'viewing as admin' pill in the page header
- Admins can now set an expiry date on data permissions
- Admins can now set a custom URL for account requests
- Admins can now include a custom message in the email that will be sent to new users.
- Admins can now prevent users from creating projects
- Admins can now prevent users from exporting results
- Various improvements to user account status management, including more clear account status messages, manual and automated account deactivation options, and instant account reactivation.
- Synonym explanation has been improved to include any/all/none
- Report plus relevance is better explained
- Numeric patient identifiers are now allowed
Bug fixes
- Fixed search on keywords through reports and forms that contained tabs (\t) and a fix to search for floating dashes (-) is being rolled out.
- The icon † for ‘deceased’ patients is now visible even if no "year of death" has been recorded in the hospital.
- Fixed an issue with disabled questions in combination with relative dates
Extended release notes
Below is a more detailed overview of some of the bigger or impactful changes in this version.
Data validation
Previously we added the Advanced Data Validation feature for the Data Collector. With this setting enabled, you could create your own custom validation labels, configure a default label and automatically select a different label after customizing a result. These advanced validation features allowed users many more options to organize their work in the validation table, but it did come at a cost: loading the full table took a lot of time and when you changed a question, the full table had to load again. So this feature was not yet ready for a wide audience and was therefore only available when a hospital admin enabled it for a project. This gave us time test the feature on real world projects, collect feedback and work on further improvements. And now we are ready to make this feature available to any user in the Data Collector.
The main change that we did is live loading: instead of waiting for the full table to load before displaying the results, we now show the first page as soon as the first results are loaded, while we continue to load the rest of the results in the background. This allows users to start analyzing the results almost immediately.
To start using the new data validation features, take the following steps:
- Browse to the Project settings and click the Validation tab
- Enable the flag for validation features
- The default validation labels are “Pending” and “Valid”, but you can customize and add labels as you see fit.
- Select which label should be applied by default
- Select if you want to set a specific label when you customize a result
Note: when you leave the validation features flag disabled, you can continue to use the validation table as you did until now.
App update notifications
As of now, when a new version of CTcue has been released in the hospital, all users will see a pop-up notification of the version update the next time they log in. The new version notification includes a confirmation of the version that is now running in the hospital and a link to the release notes.
With this automatic notification it is no longer necessary for hospital admins to inform users of new functionalities in CTcue. It will also drive traffic to any CTcue knowledge base articles and the Community Forum, which means users will stay informed about the latest CTcue changes and how to use any new features without the need for help from hospital admins.
Patient is deceased improvements
In clinical practice, health care professionals can register if a patient has deceased in two ways: either by selecting if a patient is living or deceased and/or by registering the exact date of death. The latter is not always registered in hospital records because the patient has passed away outside of the hospital and an exact date of death was never communicated, merely that the patient has passed away. In this case, just the flag 'deceased' will be added to the patient record, the exact date of death will not be registered in the record.
CTcue indicates if a patient is alive or deceased in two ways in the patient information.
- In the living / deceased column.
- In a separate column with the '†' deceased icon.
In previous versions of CTcue, the '†' deceased icon was only present if a date of death was registered for the patient. The living / deceased column was filled out based on whether the patient was flagged as alive or deceased in the health record, irrespective of if an exact date of death was recorded. This was confusing for users since it occurred that a patient was flagged as 'deceased' in one column, but the '†' deceased icon was not indicated in the other column.
In the new version of CTcue the '†' deceased icon is listed if a patient is flagged as 'deceased' irrespective of if an exact date of death is registered. From now on, it is therefore possible to find patients in CTcue that are marked with 'deceased' and the '†' deceased icon, but for which no date of death is registered.
Administrator improvements
Besides providing more and better functionality for end users, CTcue is also dedicated to making sure that managing access and permissions in the app is a smooth process for administrators. To make their lives easier, we have implemented a number of improvements in the admin panel. Below is an overview of the changes in version 4.3.0 for hospital administrators.
User account status management
It is important for hospital admins to clearly see what the status is of a user and take any necessary actions. We have made a number of changes to improve the way user accounts can be managed. These changes include:
- The account status section clearly shows the current status. When an account is deactivated, the system will show the deactivation date and the reason, for example manually deactivated, automatically deactivated due to the expiration date being reached or due to inactivity.
- Admins can set a custom expiration date that will automatically deactivate a user account at the set date.
- Admins can manually reactivate user accounts instantly with a click of a button. This will reinstate the account without the need for users to reset their password.
- In the user overview, a clock icon is shown for accounts that are deactivated or will deactivate in the next 4 weeks.
Configure a custom URL for new account requests
Requesting a new user account in CTcue is easy: users can just click the Request account button on the login page, fill out the details and await approval from the hospital admin. But what if you want to collect more information from new users before you can approve the account? Or what if your hospital is configured to use SSO access to CTcue and you want to collect account requests in an external system?
Now you can choose to configure a custom link as the target of the “request account” button on the login page. You can point it to your own external account form or to an intranet page where new users can read all necessary information about your custom account process.
To configure the custom URL for account requests, take the following actions:
- Click on the Configuration page in the Administration panel
- Browse to the section “Custom URL for account requests” on the System tab
- By default this setting is disabled, which means the standard CTcue account form is being used.
- If you enable the toggle, you can set any custom URL that you want to use. This URL is the location where users will end up when they click the button “request account” on the CTcue login page.
- Note that when the toggle is enabled and you no longer use the standard CTcue account form, you as an admin will be responsible to create the new CTcue accounts yourself on the Users page or through any external system you have configured for the use of SSO access.
Select who receives admin emails
Often there is more than one person in a hospital that has the hospital admin role in CTcue. Certain messages, such as user account requests, are automatically sent to all hospital admins. However, you may want only specific hospital admins to handle such requests. To help with that, you can now select which hospital admins will receive these email notifications. You can configure this setting when you create a new user with the hospital admin role, or you can browse to the “Email” tab on the Configuration page and select the hospital admins that you want to receive email notifications.
Customize the account verification email
When you create a new user account in CTcue, they receive an activation email to set their password. We have learned that many hospital admins usually send another email themselves to new users with additional helpful information about using CTcue, such as specific guidelines, support articles on the intranet, or how to ask for help. To streamline this communication and save some valuable time for hospital admins, we have now added the option to add custom text to the verification email.
Here is how to create the email template:
- Browse to the Configuration page and click the Email tab
- Add and format the text that you would like to send to new CTcue users in your hospital
- Click the “send test email” button to receive an example of the email template in your inbox
- If you are happy with the updated template, click “save”
Project tags
Users create projects for different reasons. Some projects focus on scientific studies, others are used to analyse quality of care. Some projects feed into live dashboards, whereas others may just be temporary test projects to try out specific queries. Maybe you want to implement different access restrictions for different types of projects. When there are only a few projects, administrators may still be able to manage them easily. But over time with a growing number of active users, the number of projects in the dashboard will grow. For administrators it would therefore be good to be able to create order in the chaos.
To help with this, we have implemented the option to use project tags. Project tags can be used to label projects as you see fit. They are completely customizable and unlimited, so you can decide which and how many tags you want to use. Project tags are optional to use, so if you see no need, you don't have to use them. If you do use them, there will be an additional field when users create a project that will let them choose from the available project tags that the administrator has defined.h This field will also appear in the Project Settings page. Projects can have multiple tags associated to them, so they can be as granular as you want.
Here is how to configure project tags:
- Browse to the Projects tab on the Configuration page
- Enable project tags
- Select if you want users to be required to add at least one project tag when they create a new project. If you select this option, the field will be required and users can't create a project without adding a tag. If you leave this option disabled, then users can create projects without adding any tags.
- Add any many project tags as you see fit. You can update existing tags, even when they are already assigned to projects.
- You can remove a tag that you no longer want to use. Note that the tag will also be removed from any projects that were using this tag. The projects themselves will not be deleted when you delete the tag.
When project tags are enabled, users will see a new field in the project creation form to assign tags:
New permissions for project creation and data export
CTcue is a great tool to collaborate with multiple users on a single project and within a project you clearly define for each user what level of access they should get. But sometimes you also want to block users from creating their own project in CTcue and start collecting data on their own. To give hospital admins greater control over this, we have added a new permission in the user account for creating projects. When you remove this permission from a user, the “create new project” button will be hidden in their account.
Pro tip: as a hospital admin you can create a project for a user and transfer ownership. That way you can easily provide a new project to a user without permissions to create their own projects.
Another new permission has been added in the user accounts for exporting data. This permission will override any permissions that are set in the collaboration settings.
Insight into active search/export schedules
In version 3.10.0 we have released the option to set up automated schedules to run search jobs and exports. These jobs add to the number of processes that run in the background, so it is important that these scheduled jobs are disabled when no longer necessary. However, users may forget to turn schedules off after they are finished with a project. But as a hospital admin you don't want to spend a lot of time accessing every project individually to check if a scheduling job is enabled.
As of version 4.3.0 there is a new filter available in the right panel on the Projects page that allows you to filter for projects that have scheduled search and/or export enabled. These projects now also show a calendar icon next to the project name that indicates that a schedule is enabled. When hovering over this icon, you can see directly when the schedule is set to run. This will provide hospital admins with a quick and clear overview to monitor and manage these schedules.
Viewing projects as admin
Hospital admins can access all projects in the hospital, also when they have not been added as a collaborator. But when you access someone else's project as a hospital admin, there are certain actions that you cannot perform, such as include/exclude patients. So to make it clear why you may be missing these options, we now display an indicator at the top of the page that you are viewing the project as an admin.
Pro tip: if you need access to any blocked features in the project, you could add yourself as a collaborator with the matching permissions.