This spring, the COHHIO’s HMIS team released a new custom reporting system called R minor, an open source project being developed in-house to overcome limitations in the reporting provided by our HMIS vendor.
The project consists of two sites: R minor, which is publicly available, and R minor elevated, which requires a login. Both sites are mobile-friendly and interactive.
R minor has a provider dashboard and aggregate project-level reporting like Performance and Outcomes data in relation to CoC goals and Unit Utilization. In this new reporting system, HMIS users and others can find visually compelling graphs from HMIS data paired with helpful descriptions of terms and methodology. Coming soon for R minor is an improved provider dashboard and CoC-level System Performance Measures based on HUD specifications.
R minor elevated provides more detail to HMIS users about the aggregate data seen in R minor. A recently-added Data Quality tab allows users to quickly see details about errors that need correction in HMIS. Additionally, R minor elevated provides feedback about the function of Coordinated Entry processes, identifying gaps in referral and assessment. Our Veterans Active List, which contains all of the USICH Criteria and Benchmark measurements, is expected to be added soon.
R minor and R minor elevated were developed using a free and open source programming language called R. COHHIO likewise made the intentional decision to make this reporting system free and open source, continuing our commitment to sharing our work with others. You can find the source code for R minor and our other data analysis here: https://github.com/COHHIO.
Development of R minor and R minor elevated will continue to progress as we move our custom reporting into this system. HMIS Data Analyst Genelle Denzin has been learning R and R Shiny over the past year and a half and has not looked back. She presented at the National Human Services Data Consortium on an R-related topic this Fall and continues to develop and improve R minor and R minor elevated with the support of the CoC and HMIS teams and the broader R community.
