The development of a multicenter database for reference values in clinical neurophysiology--principles and examples

This paper describes the work undertaken to establish principles for the development of multicenter databases for reference values in clinical neurophysiology. The study was initiated because of interest of the involved laboratories in knowledge-based systems in electromyographic diagnosis, for which it was necessary to formalize the key concepts in the diagnostic process: diseases, pathophysiology and test results. The paper deals specifically with the structuring of results of motor and sensory nerve conduction studies.