[Reflections on information management in clinical research]

Some considerations are made on the importance of clinical, information and its transcendence in medical research, as well as on the ethical value of a qualitatively correct data treatment. After describing by means of a bibliographical search, the present-day tendency towards knowledge based systems, there is offered a general overview of clinical information management, from data collection through study design and statistical assessment, up to the building of a knowledge data base.