Design and evolution of the data management systems in the Prostate, Lung,Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial

This paper describes the design and evolution of the data management system s developed in support of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. These systems span platforms from stand-alone computers t o distributed systems on local area net-works to mainframes. Allowing all o f these systems to share appropriate information electronically introduces integration, synchronization, testing, and support challenges. For each pla tform, applications were developed to handle data entry, editing, trial man agement, reporting, telecommunications, and data sharing. Approaches to iss ues such as level of data access, integration with other, existing applicat ions, and handling the expansion of the protocol are discussed. Control Cli n Trials 2000;21:329S-348S (C) Elsevier Science Inc. 2000.