Treatment of medical databases and their graphical representation on the Internet

Abstract

The use of new information technologies could facilitate enormously work to process and spread knowledge from medical data and, in particular, epidemiological data from cancer registries. Cancer registries are official institutions that collect information on the occurrence and outcome of cancer in defined population groups (city, region, or country). The aim of the present project was to design and develop a graphical web system to offer clear information about medical information, in this case cancer incidence, using Internet technology. A protocol and a system to process, manipulate, and represent medical data, epidemiological cancer data, from the Epidemiology Unit and Cancer Registry of the Balearic Islands, has been developed. All the steps to change the data format to obtain a medical data graphical representation database have been described. The result of the project is an application built in graphical web format that can be accessed at the following URL: http://gmein.uib.es/registro/resultados/resultados2.htm.

Keywords:

• Medical data
• cancer registry data
• graphical representation
• Internet
• World Wide Web

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Conselleria de Direcció General de Recerca, Desenvolupament Tecnològic i Innovació, Conselleria d'Economia, Hisenda i Innovació of Govern Balear (Accions Especials de Recerca, Desenvolupament Tecnològic i Innovació). The Unit of Epidemiology and Cancer Registry of Balearic Islands is supported by the Conselleria de Salut i Consum of Govern Balear.