The Question We Hear A Lot
"We've been tracking behavior data for months/years in [old Electronic Data Collection (EDC)/paper system]. When we move to Motivity, what happens to that history? Can we bring it forward?"
When transitioning to Motivity Clinical, many organizations wonder what happens to their historical clinical data.
The Short Answer
Yes! There are several things you can do, and we recommend doing more than one of them together.
Why This Matters
Having a plan for historical data before you go live in Motivity protects your organization's compliance records, preserves meaningful clinical trends on graphs, and ensures your team doesn't lose context that took months or years to build. The options below can be used individually or in combination depending on your organization's needs.
Option 1: Keep the Raw Historical Data as a Backup File (Recommended)
This is for compliance and record-keeping. It doesn't show up on graphs, it's stored for when anyone needs to reference the original data later.
Export the patient's raw data from your old EDC
Go to the patient's profile in Motivity's Practice Management
Navigate to Documents
Upload the raw export from the old system (bulk file or individual files)
We recommend completing this step for every learner being transitioned, regardless of which other options you choose to use.
Option 2: Bring Forward a Historical Average as a Data Point (Recommended)
This option preserves continuity on the graph, so a clinician looking at a target's graph (example: Aggression - Frequency/Rate) six months from now can still see where the learner started, instead of the graph beginning cold on day one of Motivity.
Here's the workflow:
In the Program Builder, create a track phase for the target (e.g., name it "Average From Former EDC System") to represent the data from prior to your transition to Motivity
Go to the learner's Timeline and add a past session dated to match the last day of data collection in the old system
In that session, click Add Unexercised Targets
Find the behavior-reduction target you want to bring history into (e.g., 1-Behavior Reduction > Aggression - Frequency/Rate)
Click + Transition
Select the phase you created in Step 1
Confirm the transition, set the timestamp to match the last day on the old system, and click Transition
Once the target is sitting in that new phase, click + Data and enter the historical average as a single data point (e.g., average daily frequency)
That gives you one clean data point representing the old system's average, sitting right before the phase where new Motivity data collection picks up. Repeat this for each behavior/target you want historical continuity on.
Average vs. Individual Data Points: You don't have to use an average — you can add individual historical data points instead. The tradeoff is time.
There's no bulk upload option for this, so individual data points have to be added day by day as past sessions, which gets time-consuming fast if you're bringing forward weeks or months of history.
An average is much quicker to enter and you can choose whatever date range makes sense (a month, several months, an authorization or reporting period, all time) depending on what the clinic wants reflected.
Option 3: Add a Graph Annotation Marking the Transition (Optional, adds clarity)
If you want to make the transition to Motivity itself visible and clear on the graph, you can add an event line noting the switch. Something like:
"Began collecting data in Motivity"
"Transitioned from [Old System] to Motivity"
You can also add a note directly on the average phase describing the time window the prior data represents, such as:
"Measurement of behavior prior to Motivity is an average. As seen on the graph, this was the daily average from May 2025 to July 2025."
This is an optional enhancement for clinics that want extra clarity for anyone reviewing the graph later.
Here's an example of what your graph would look like using options 2 and 3:
Option 4: Professional Services Manual Data Upload (Paid Add-On)
This is a paid add-on and is completed by Motivity's Professional Services Team not Implementation, Customer Success, or Support.
If a clinic wants individual historical data points brought in (not an average) but doesn't want to spend the time entering them day by day, our Professional Services team can manually input the data from a CSV file on the clinic's behalf.
Reach out to your Implementation or Customer Success Manager for more information.
A Note on Timing
These steps are easiest to complete during implementation, before data collection starts in Motivity. If your organization is already live and asking about this after the fact, the same steps still work — you're just adding a past session and phase retroactively.
What About Skill Acquisition Data?
Everything above is written with behavior reduction targets in mind. The same phase and transition approach from Option 2 can technically be applied to skill acquisition targets, but it would be more time-consuming since most learners have far more skill acquisition targets than behavior reduction ones.
Our recommendation: Only input historical averages for behavior reduction targets. Skill acquisition history is optional and we would not recommend it unless your organization has a specific need for it.
If you still want to reflect skill acquisition history without recreating the full data trend, a lighter option is to add the targets in Motivity and manually transition them to Completed. This preserves an accurate count of completed targets per program without the extra work of the average and phase workflow.
Resources:
Reports
If your transition occurs during an active authorization or reporting period, see our Handling Reports That Span Two Systems article for guidance on keeping your clinical documentation complete and funder-ready.
Exporting Raw Data from Other Platforms
If you are exporting data from a previous platform, the following resources may be helpful. We recommend checking with your existing vendor for the most current export instructions.
CentralReach
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Hi Rasmus
Last Updated: 9/4/26 by Amanda Kelly