SCEPI — your gateway to community science
SCEPI (Smartphone-based Collection of Epidemiological Information) is a web and mobile platform to conduct large-scale, prospective health research via smartphones. It connects participants with researchers, anonymously, securely and with participants having full control of their data.
Unlike paper or web surveys, SCEPI lives in your smartphone. It is the only tool you need to participate — from first sign-up to your weekly health check-in, everything happens inside the app. It is freely available from Google Play Store and Apple App Store, and has your privacy built in at its core with full GDPR compliance.
The way it works is that you receive a study-specific QR code — from a poster, from social media, a friend, a coworker, your doctor, etc. Scan it with your phone camera (or tap the study link) and your phone will open the SCEPI app installation page (unless already installed). Scan it again after installation, and the study page opens inside the app.
A full Participant Information Sheet with an Informed Consent Form (specific to the study) will be presented to you. Take your time reading — there is no rush, and you can always withdraw your consent later at any time if you’re unsure. Once you have checked every box and tapped “I consent”, your enrolment to the study is complete and you have access to its questionnaires.
Before you can fill them in, as a first-time user you need to create an account by providing your email address and confirming it with a one-time password (OTP) sent to your inbox; this is the only personal detail SCEPI ever asks for, and is used solely for login — study researchers never see it, and your anonymity is guaranteed.
From that point on, you fill in the questionnaires of the study as provided for by the researchers. Some are one-off, others may be recurring (daily, weekly or monthly). But all questionnaires can be filled in retrospectively, and you can review and edit all your submitted data at any time. Further, you can download a zip archive with all submitted data (data portability) and you may delete your data at any time, either at the study level (by withdrawing your consent to participate) or across all studies (right to be forgotten) at the tap of a button.
Your privacy, by design
Indeed SCEPI was built from the ground up around one principle: participants should have full control of their data at all times. Here is what that means in practice:
- Your email stays private. ✉ It is only used to log you into the app as a unique user. The research team never sees it — they only see a random numeric participant ID assigned to your study responses.
- Full transparency. 👁 You can view, edit and download every piece of data you have ever submitted, directly from the app. Nothing is hidden.
- Secure storage. 🔒 All data are encrypted at rest on a secure server. No names, addresses, identity numbers, or IP addresses are ever collected by the SCEPI app.
- Withdraw in one tap. ⚡ You can revoke your consent and leave the study at any moment — with the option to delete all your previously submitted data immediately. No questions asked, no delays, no researcher intervention required.
- Never sold, never shared commercially. 🚫 Your data is never disclosed to any third party for any reason (including commercial), nor do we ever serve you any ads.
- Full GDPR compliance. 📋 The SCEPI app is fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You have the right to access, correct, and delete your data at any time — and the app is designed to make exercising those rights immediate and effortless.
- Flexibility. 💪 You can fill in questionnaires even without an internet connection — for example while travelling or in an area with poor signal. The app saves your responses locally and syncs them to the server automatically the next time you are online.
Additionally SCEPI facilitates communication between researchers and participants: researchers can send messages to participants, and also participants can anonymously and securely send their questions to study researchers via the app. SCEPI also seamlessly supports multilingual surveys.
The SCEPI platform was developed by European University Cyprus, for use by its affiliated researchers for their projects. PNOE is the first research project now rolling out that is using SCEPI.
If you have any questions about SCEPI, please send an email to scepi@euc.ac.cy. For data protection questions, contact the European University Cyprus Data Protection Officer at dpo@euc.ac.cy.