Diagnosis in acute abdominal pain is a frequent and still unsolved problem. High diagnostic error rates are observed with serious consequences for the patient. Studies in the EU have shown that diagnosis in acute abdominal pain can be considerably improved by standardization of history and clinical examination, by using standardized forms and computer programs for documentation and by introducing objective decision making and computer aided diagnosis. It is the aim of the concerted action to develop a standardized software package in national languages of several partners in central and eastern Europe providing diagnosting support for acute abdominal pain. The product will be based on existing systems developed within EU-research-programs (COMAC; AIM) having involved national and international societies and will be developed using new approaches to software engineering (language data dictionary for multi-lingual computerized systems, object oriented analysis and design).

The project is divided into 8 phases: preparatory phase, software engineering, development of a national data dictionary, preparatory phase for introduction of the software, introduction of the software into clinical routine, clinical application of the software and final evaluation. The program will be distributed to central and eastern European hospitals, introduced into the clinic and applied in clinical routine. A prospective data base of acute abdominal pain will be built up. The concerted action will have major implications with respect to health care in the central and eastern European countries: a baseline is established allowing for the first time the comparison between data of the central and eastern European countries and existing data bases in the EU. Analysis will be based on standardized and comparable data and will show whether there are differences in health care in abdominal pain or not. Analysis will reveal, whether possible differences are based on patient characteristics, education of the doctors or lacking technology. The concerted action will clarify, whether in a specific clinical field the introduction of information technology helps to establish clinical standards in the central and eastern European countries and whether this technology improves health care. If successful, further research projects and concerted actions in this direction are justified and the procedure can be expanded to other clinical fields.