The internet has evolved in recent years from a limited operation used by university and government entities to a structure fundamental in the daily routine of virtually all organizations, both public and private, and millions of individual users. The use of the web for research studies has a number of advantages in terms of cost savings, reduced personnel needs, and data quality. In multi-center clinical trials, web technology has broadened the communication lines between coordinating centers and remote sites to such an extent that the conversion of many standard trial functions to online processing is not only desirable and feasible but in short order will become a necessity. Building upon our already considerable experience in this area, this proposal requests funding to develop web-based routines that will have broad applicability to the clinical trials and epidemiologic studies supported by the National Eye Institute and to establish a resource center to facilitate their use. The specific objectives of the proposal are to: -Develop web-based training and certification routines for ophthalmic personnel involved in visual acuity testing in multi-center clinical trials. -Establish a resource center for the NEI-funded clinical trials for web-based training and certification testing at Jaeb Center for Health Research -Develop web-based patient visual acuity testing for clinical trials. We have already developed a web-based training and certification program for pediatric visual acuity testing. We now propose to extend t his technology to develop a similar program for the standard refraction and ETDRS visual acuity protocols routinely used in adult clinical trials measuring visual acuity. We believe that this program will gain widespread use and expect it to be used by all NEI trials measuring visual acuity with the ETDRS chars. Therefore, we will establish a resource center for all of the NEI-funded clinical trials for training and certification of vision testers using both the pediatric and ETDRS protocols. We believe that such a center will not only enhance data quality in NEI trials but will also reduce the costs to conduct many trials. Development of a web-based program for actual visual acuity testing is a natural extension of the work we have already done. This, too, can be expected to be a resource for all NEI trials measuring visual acuity.
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