Unit IT, Data Management and Medical Documentation

The unit in its current form exists since 1993. It provides support to all departments and working groups in the fields of study design, programming, data management, data assessment, documentation and further IT issues. The members with their different skills are involved in nearly all studies and all study phases, from planning and design through to data analysis and documentation. The unit works interdepartmentally. Services are also available for working groups and partners outside the institute.

Besides supporting ongoing studies, the unit develops tools for the implementation of studies and surveys. A set of routines and procedures for data management, questionnaires for computer-assisted interviewing and a study management system to operate and supervise data assessment have been programmed and are constantly improved. These tools are also employed outside the institute in multicentric, international studies.

Furthermore, the unit has to maintain and administrate data and to harness data to evaluations, to guarantee professional data entry and to secure an effective IT infrastructure for the institute.

All necessary qualifications and skills merge and are enhanced in this unit. The long-standing experienced staff is familiar with the whole range of epidemiological studies.

Main tasks

• Study support
  • IT-technical counselling for planning and carrying out studies
  • Translating questionnaires into entry masks and rules
  • Design and compilation of databases for the administration of study data
  • Construction of plausibility programmes / Quality control
  • Data preparation for interim and final analyses
  • Realisation of basic counting
  • Organisation and realisation of data entry
  • Coding of different medical variables such as: diagnosis coding (ICD 9 and 10); Tumour localisation and histology findings (ICDO 2 and 3); TNM-classification (5 and 6)
• Programme development
  • Developing assessment tools for computer assisted interviews
  • Compiling programmes and tools for study management
• Supplying infrastructure
  • Design, installation and administration of the IT system
  • Supervising the IT infrastructure
  • Support and training for users
  • Maintenance, administration and activation of the institute's databases
  • Supplying data for secondary analyses
  • Supervision of trainees and students working on their diploma or PhD thesis