Information technology in clinical research in rheumatology domain.

The development of a functional clinical database of rheumatic diseases represents an essential step in the process of acquiring the necessary epidemiological and other information on disorders under study. In 1999-2005 the Institute of Rheumatology in cooperation with the EuroMISE Center has developed the Clinical database/National Register of selected systemic inflammatory rheumatic diseases inclusive of a bank of sera and DNA. Aims of this phase of the pilot research were gathering clinical, laboratory, genetic, pharmaco-and socio-economic data in a representative sample of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic sclerosis, polymyositis/dermatomyositis, mixed connective tissue disease; rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile chronic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis and reactive arthritis. In 2002 the preset number of over 2000 registered patients had been achieved with collaboration of 34 territorial and 20 institutional rheumatologists in the whole covering the majority of the Czech Republic. Based on experiences gathered, the systems for other related studies are being developed and implemented using modern information technologies.