Transmission of the results of tests for International Olympic Committee-defined drugs of abuse.

The hardware and software facilities for electronic storage, transfer and handling of data is such that multipurpose databases can be made accessible without geographic restriction at low cost. The versatile and flexible underlying structures allow for ease of access and retrieval of data and gives presentation formats fully comparable to printed counterparts. Because of the apparent ease of use and because of the wider distribution of the information, misinterpretation is more likely to occur than in oral or written presentation for more restricted and more culturally homogeneous audiences. This necessitates some degree of harmonisation/standardisation of data on transfer, while allowing local expression forms at sender and receiver ends (Fig. 1). This document is part of an ongoing international effort to agree on some sort of "standardisation" of the transmission and presentation of "laboratory results". It centers on the domain of drugs of abuse as defined by the International Olympic Committee.