[Off-line data base system for out-patients (author's transl)]

About 7000 out-patients of the Kardiologische Universitätsklinik in Vienna have been documented in an off-line data base system. The documentation includes the diagnosis (cardiac diagnoses in WHO-code), date of special events (operations, interventions and complications) and the clinical follow-up. The data entry is done by interactive defined data definition tables (similar to codasyl). A powerful query language was built and the sorted data can be used for patient listing, statistical analysis or as in-put for a letter system. With this data base system it is possible to support the daily work, i.e. to write automatically letters to patients, who did not come to their appointment. For scientific means the data base system is able to answer in a simple and fast way specific questions, i.e. search for patients with different diagnoses and specific events at certain times.