A new generation of remote data entry: using WAP-phones in clinical trials

This paper presents an introduction to a new approach in the field of clinical trial information technology. During the last years, more and more modern tools have found their ways to the different tasks during the design, the realization and data processing in the clinical trial. Choosing tools depends on a variety of conditions and aspects that have to be considered. Besides issues in the field of trial software, the focus of research also turns over to special hardware used in the trial. The Wireless Markup Language (WML) offers the possibility of using handheld devices like mobile phones (handy) or Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) for remote data entry. These widespread, easy to use hardware devices could use wireless access to the standard internet for use in their applications. This combination seems to become a success because of the existing infrastructure, the ongoing efforts in improving and enlarging the internet platform and not at last because the approach is so similar to the well accepted World Wide Web (WWW). As today this technology has not yet matured, different criteria have to be mentioned when choosing hard- and software for this application. We will show some aspects related especially to modern handheld devices and the belonging software.