Sippel H, Ohmann C
Department of General and Trauma Surgery, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Med Inform (Lond). 1998 Jul-Sep;23(3):223-9. doi: 10.3109/14639239809001402.
Data collection in multi-centre controlled clinical trials is a major problem. We describe a web-based documentation system for data collection via the Internet we have developed in Java. It keeps both the platform independent program (a Java applet) and the database on a single server to which the participating centres have access at any time. It is based on a three-tier model where client requests are handled and monitored by an application server (a Java application). We show the advantages such a system has over the HTML/CGI combination which is often used for database access, as well as possible extensions, e.g. connection to a data dictionary. Finally, we discuss the security problems which arise by the use of the Internet for data collection.
