Anwenderorientierte Betrachtungen der informationstechnologischen Ausgestaltung des medizinischen Forschungsnetzwerks Brain-Net

The Brain-Net has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of
Education and Research since October 1999. Being a
crossover-project within the German medical competence networks,
the Brain-Net plays an important role for harmonisation of
neuropathological diagosis of neurological diseases and is closely
related to the German Brain-Bank, which has been established by the
network. One of the superior objectives of the Brain-Net is to
optimise communication between scientists, physicians, patients and
the public. Suitable organisational structures, workflows and
technologies have been established, which facilitate the immediate
provision of specific information to the named groups. Part of this
was realised by using information technology (IT). Basically two
different IT-tools have been developed to optimise information flow
between physicians and scientists on one hand and between the
Brain-Net, patients and public on the other: a) An internet-based
German Brain-Bank which is accessible via Remote-Data-Entry (RDE)
by authorized users and which is protected an approved e-security
system. b) An online-information system for presentation of
Brain-Net activities to members and the public. The design of
technical solutions minimizes the barriers typical to usage of IT,
which results in a centralised system with “thin clients”, an
intuitive graphical user interface and optimised maintenance
services. This study describes the design of the Brain-Net in terms
of information technology with a focus on the users' perspective.