SITIE: a health care workstation integration architecture for epidemiologists.

SITIE is a workstation devoted to epidemiological data selection, analysis, and representation. Epidemiological data are collected using the French Communicable Diseases computer Network and stored in an Oracle database. Disease selection and spatial and temporal representations can be done using a user friendly graphic interface. SITIE automatically generates SQL requests to the Oracle database, extracts the data, processes it according to the user's choice, and represents the data. SITIE is built upon the AVS graphic package and allows the creation of new applications using previously developed modules linked together to form a network. SITIE can be viewed as a tool box for epidemiological data representations. Three example applications are detailed in order to make clear the way a new application can be built using SITIE. The reusability of modules is exemplified by a compound application.