Telematic methods and techniques for performing multicentre trials in clinical movement analysis

Multicentre trial (MCT) deals with a clinical research activity performed among Rehabilitation Centres. Tt is aimed at developing functional evaluation protocols that are executed in a standardized and concerted manner, and give rise to normative/reference data bases. Prerequisites: the existence of agreed protocols the availability of coherent data sets high reliability of data collection and processing. The clinical relevance of the use of the telematic media in building and updating the above-mentioned databases lies in: statistical significance of the MCT reliability of data communication avoidance of specialistic teams for buiIding and updating databases. the possibility of having a snapshot view of the data at any time, from any desired viewpoint. The reliability of data collection and processing can be guaranteed by the adoption of a suitable user friendly interface (LJFI) which, once protocols have been agreed among clinicians, and meaningful variables and quantities have been defined, manages the clinical test and allows the transfer of data from and to the database. In the present paper a MCT case will be shown based on the use of a properly developed UFI which interacts with databases distributed at a number of clinical centres. The use of distributed databases is felt as a necessity for clinical application, because the set of agreed protocols should be considered a subset with respect to the set of test protocols performed at the various clinical sites. In this paper the architecture of the network will be presented, together with a prototype of the UFI which has been developed within the Project CAMARC II.