The SURVANT engine allows the authoring of complex data collection workflows and can run on the desktop/laptop or tablet, operating off-line, as well as online over the internet. It can be customised fully to the user's requirements, both the user interface and functionality, as well as integrate with existing software or devices, e.g. retrieval of medical measurements.
Users author their data collection/survey specification in Microsoft Word using a simple, structured textual format. SURVANT automatically parses the text, creating an intermediate language which is used by the engine to enact the survey, collect the data and perform any custom processing.
SURVANT is designed to be extensible and interoperable. It is compatible with systems exposing REST APIs
and can interact with data from any database via a plug-in. Internally the engine uses its own metadata-driven XML-based language, SurvantML, but SURVANT is also adopting the DDI standard. This allows import and enactment of DDI surveys but also export of DDI metadata in order to comply with emerging standards.