Legal issues to address when managing clinical information across Europe: the ECIT case study (www.ECIT.info).

This paper identifies issues which will need to be addressed in pursuing the aims and objectives of the European Classification of Infertility Taskforce (ECIT), namely: to establish classification codes for infertility management; to improve the consistency of infertility information collection by specialist centres, particularly but not exclusively by computerised systems; to use these codes to enable the transfer of infertility information from specialist centres to national infertility data registries; to develop a Grid linking the data held in European infertility data registries; to use Grid processing to mine the data in the European infertility data registries to optimise patient management improving the effectiveness of treatment and reducing the risk.