The use of a computerized system in defining the therapeutic spectrum of antidepressants

Few substantial improvements have been made in the development of detailed and logical methodologies and techniques for analysing, documenting and presenting information acquired during clinical trials on psychotherapeutic agents. This results in a loss of information and makes it impossible to compare or combine data derived from different clinical trials, even on the same drug. We believe that a more extensive utilization of the large amount of data collected in clinical trials may be derived through the use of computerized systems for analysing and documenting such data. With the purpose of studying computer-based data documentation techniques, at the Institute of Clinical Psychiatry of the University of Pisa there has been jointly established by the US National Institute of Mental Health and the University of Pisa a Centre for Clinical Psychopharmacology Data Documentation (CCPDD). The major objective of the CCPDD is to enhance the quality of clinical trials of psychotherapeutic agents by improving computer-based data documentation techniques which allow more understandable, comprehensive, exhaustive and standardized data analysis and data presentation. The CCPDD operates the Biometric Laboratory Information Processing System/Data Bank for Psychopharmacology (BLIPS/DBP), a fully computerized system designed to process any type of assessment data in standardized ways providing the basic documentation for each clinical trial.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)