RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Collecting data on organizational structures of trauma centers: the CAFE web service JF Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open JO Trauma Surg Acute Care Open FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd SP e000473 DO 10.1136/tsaco-2020-000473 VO 5 IS 1 A1 Mathias Brochhausen A1 Jane W Ball A1 Nels D Sanddal A1 Jimm Dodd A1 Naomi Braun A1 Sarah Bost A1 Joseph Utecht A1 Robert J Winchell A1 Kevin W Sexton YR 2020 UL http://tsaco.bmj.com/content/5/1/e000473.abstract AB Background During the past several decades, the American College of Surgeons has led efforts to standardize trauma care through their trauma center verification process and Trauma Quality Improvement Program. Despite these endeavors, great variability remains among trauma centers functioning at the same level. Little research has been conducted on the correlation between trauma center organizational structure and patient outcomes. We are attempting to close this knowledge gap with the Comparative Assessment Framework for Environments of Trauma Care (CAFE) project.Methods Our first action was to establish a shared terminology that we then used to build the Ontology of Organizational Structures of Trauma centers and Trauma systems (OOSTT). OOSTT underpins the web-based CAFE questionnaire that collects detailed information on the particular organizational attributes of trauma centers and trauma systems. This tool allows users to compare their organizations to an aggregate of other organizations of the same type, while collecting their data.Results In collaboration with the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, we tested the system by entering data from three trauma centers and four trauma systems. We also tested retrieval of answers to competency questions.Discussion The data we gather will be made available to public health and implementation science researchers using visualizations. In the next phase of our project, we plan to link the gathered data about trauma center attributes to clinical outcomes.