The Brain-Net has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research since October 1999. Being a crossover-project within the German medical competence networks, the Brain-Net plays an important role for harmonisation of neuropathological diagosis of neurological diseases and is closely related to the German Brain-Bank, which has been established by the network.
One of the superior objectives of the Brain-Net is to optimise communication between scientists, physicians, patients and the public. Suitable organisational structures, workflows and technologies have been established, which facilitate the immediate provision of specific information to the named groups. Part of this was realised by using information technology (IT).
Basically two different IT-tools have been developed to optimise information flow between physicians and scientists on one hand and between the Brain-Net, patients and public on the other:
a) An internet-based German Brain-Bank which is accessible via Remote-Data-Entry (RDE) by authorized users and which is protected an approved e-security system.
b) An online-information system for presentation of Brain-Net activities to members and the public.
The design of technical solutions minimizes the barriers typical to usage of IT, which results in a centralised system with “thin clients”, an intuitive graphical user interface and optimised maintenance services.
This study describes the design of the Brain-Net in terms of information technology with a focus on the users' perspective.