Development of a Virtual Private Database for a multi-institutional Internet-based Radiation Oncology Database overcoming differences in protocols.
A multi-institutional Radiation Oncology Greater Area Database (ROGAD) was started in 1991 under the direction of the Japanese Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (JASTRO). Use of ROGAD was intended to allow reflection of results of data analysis into treatment strategy and treatment planning for individual cases, to provide quality assurance, to maximize the efficacy of radiotherapy, to allow assessment of new technologies or new modalities, and to optimize medical decision making. ROGAD collected 13,448 radiotherapy treatment cases from 325 facilities during the period from 1992 to 2001. In 2000, questionnaires were sent to 725 radiotherapy facilities throughout Japan, to further obtain the situation of the radiation oncology database. Workers at 179 facilities replied that"the protocol of my facility is different from ROGAD protocol and I must send data according to the ROGAD protocol". So, we developed the Virtual Private Database System (VPDS) which is operated as if an oncologist had a database solely owned by his own facility, in spite of actually operating ROGAD. VPDS realizes integration of different plural databases, regardless of differences in entry methods, protocols, definitions and interpretations of contents of clinical data elements between facilities.
Harauchi
Hajime
H
School of Allied Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Osaka University, Japan. harauchi@sahs.med.osaka-u.ac.jp
Kondo
Takashi
T
Kumasaki
Yu
Y
Ishibashi
Masatoshi
M
Numasaki
Hodaka
H
Kou
Hiroko
H
Okura
Yasuhiko
Y
Umeda
Tokuo
T
Takemura
Akihiro
A
Inamura
Kiyonari
K
D002985:Clinical Protocols; D003625:Data Collection; D016208:Databases, Factual; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D016347:Medical Records Systems, Computerized; D015337:Multicenter Studies as Topic; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D018787:Radiation Oncology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014584:User-Computer Interface