[Development and Integration of the Oncological Documentation System ODS]

Purpose: To simplify clinical routine and to improve medical quality without exceeding the existing resources. Intensifying communication and cooperation between all institutions of patients' health care. The huge amount of documentation work of physicians can no longer be done without modern tools of paperless data processing.

Methods: The development of ODS was a tight cooperation between physician and technician which resulted in a mutual understanding and led to a high level of user convenience. - At present all cases of gynecology, especially gynecologic oncology can be documented and processed by ODS. Users easily will adopt the system as data entry within different program areas follows the same rules. In addition users can choose between an individual input of data and assistants guiding them through highly specific areas of documentation.

Results: ODS is a modern, modular structured and very fast multiuser database environment for in- and outpatient documentation. It automatically generates a lot of reports for clinical day to day business. Statistical routines will help the user reflecting his work and its quality. Documentation of clinical trials according to the GCP guidelines can be done by ODS using the internet or offline datasharing.

Conclusions: As ODS is the synthesis of a computer based patient administration system and an oncological documentation database, it represents the basis for the construction of the electronical patient chart as well as the digital documentation of clinical trials. The introduction of this new technology to physicians and nurses has to be done slowly and carefully, in order to increase motivation and to improve the results.