Internet access to a medical case repository for teaching and analysis.

The acute radiation syndrome is a rare disease. Teaching its treatment and the achievement of scientific progress require a sufficient number of accessible case histories. An information system for standardized recording of acute radiation syndrome case histories has been established in the framework of the World Health Organization Radiation Medical Emergency Preparedness and Assistance Network Centers. The information system has been realized in client/server architecture. The centers are able to access the database by easy to use graphical user interfaces via the Internet. Focusing on optimization of network traffic and flexible information retrieval the hypertext transfer protocol has not been applied. At the moment the system is tested on the campus of the University of Ulm before it will be installed at the other centers.