Answers to the most frequently asked questions:
FungiScope® is open for scientists and clinicians, who are able to provide clinical cases of rare invasive fungal infections.
Participation is free of charge.
Becoming a partner within the FungiScope network is possible, however, documented clinical cases are necessary for joint publications. If you do not have clinical cases, which can be contributed to the FungiScope® registry, we are happy to keep you informed of our progress through our Twitter Account and FungiScope® Newsletter.
The documentation of clinical data takes place in anonymized form. No patient-identifiable data, such as name or date of birth, and no pseudonyms are entered into the database. Re-identification of the patient is therefore not possible. Data on demographics, risk factors, diagnostics, symptoms, site of infection, treatment and outcome are of interest.
Due to the anonymized, retrospective data collection a patient informed consent is not necessary in general. Nevertheless, we are happy to provide you with a respective document in case your institutional requirements make it necessary.
Your own contributions are accessible through your personal account at www.clinicalsurveys.net at any time. There is no restriction for usage of your own data, you are free to use your contribution for independent research at any time without any prior note to FungiScope®. You have access to your and only your own cases. In case of a joint publication all contributors with cases of interest for the planned analysis will be invited to join the study group.
With prior consent by all participants data may be shared within the participating sites for the sole purpose of data analysis for the particular analysis. A data transfer agreement is to be signed by the parties involved for this purpose.
Because of data protection only cases entered through the personal FungiScope® account can be viewed.
Depending on the number of cases and your institutional regulations, there are several ways to participate without documenting yourself. Depending on the geographic location and language, a documenter from the FungiScope® team may travel to your institution and document on-site. Alternatively, the anonymized physician’s letter (patient-identifiable information such as name, date of birth must be redacted) may be faxed to the FungiScope® team in accordance with institutional policies so that we document the case for you.
Other individual options may be discussed. Please contact us at fungiscope[at]uk-koeln.de.
Your entered clinical case is stored anonymously and will be accessed by selected clinicians and employees of the University Hospital of Cologne, Germany to complete the validation process to ensure high data quality. The PI´s contact information is stored separately for the purpose of joint data analysis and publications. Data will be stored in the database for future joint data analysis.
Documented clinical cases are stored on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant platform ClinicalSurveys.net. Please look in our study protocol for further information.
Once your cases will be included in an analysis and publications, authorship positions or inclusion into the collaborator group is assigned according to your individual contribution to this particular study, which includes number of cases contributed and other valuable contributions, which may be not put in numbers. Please contact us for detailed information.
The documentation of clinical cases is mandatory for participation in the FungiScope® study. Sending the respective clinical isolates for species identification and susceptibility testing is a valuable additional contribution to the documented clinical case. If the fungal isolate is of particular interest outside the registry, please contact us for further details on how to proceed.
Please write an email to fungiscope[at]uk-koeln.de and we will send you new log-in data.