At the end of the year 2001 representatives of 5 Austrian HIV treatment centres (AKH Vienna
Otto-Wagner-Hospital Vienna AKH Linz LKH Innsbruck and LKH Graz West) have founded the
Austrian HIV Cohort Study (AHIVCOS). In 2008 two more centres (LKH Salzburg and LKH
Klagenfurt) and in 2016 one more centre (Kaiser- Franz-Josef-Hospital Vienna) joined the
AHIVCOS. The responsibility for the medical and scientific coordination lies with Robert
Zangerle from the Innsbruck Medical University. Aims of Austrian cohort study are: 1)
Optimization of patient management 2) HIV surveillance 3) Research projects A special software
the HIV Patient Management System (HIP) is used in all centres and has replaced the previous
HIV data base in 2005. The input of data is (was) done peripherally in the HIV treatment
centres which consistently use the data base for clinical care. The input of laboratory
findings is mostly done electronically. Apart from nurses and doctors additional professional
groups are involved in data entry in some centres (social workers psychologists). Before data
can be merged the cohort participants are made anonymous. Therefore it is cumbersome to
identify cohort participants who are were treated in more than just one treatment centre. This
cannot be done by the use of personal data such as initials birthday or postal code but with
HIV specific data (date of the HIV test CD4 cell counts etc.). HIV Patient Management System:
Designed as a client-server application the HIP stores its data in a persistent SQL database.
The software is based on the model driven architecture paradigm and has been implemented with
Microsoft .NET technology. The company DI Heinz Appoyer (now called network vita) was entrusted
with the development of the HIP. The required hardware is provided by the local IT departments
in the centres. In terms of data protection the programme fully complies with the Austrian data
protection act (DSG 2000 valid since 1.1.2000). Access to the data base in the centres is
restricted to authorized users only. On the one hand the HIP fulfils complex tasks for the
clinical management of HIV infected patients and on the other hand it allows queries and
analyses to be performed by the users without restrictions. However to allow both individual
patient management and scientific queries is an enormous challenge which scientific HIV cohorts
in other countries have not had to deal with. In Austria there was no acceptance for a purely
scientific data base. While for the clinical patient management the focus is on readability of
diagnoses and therapies creation of medical reports prescriptions (trade names!) print-out
of results etc. scientific queries need precise coding and categorization. Furthermore the
optimization of individual patient management requires an ongoing adjustment to the progress of
information technology whereas purely scientific data bases do not have such technological
renewal pressure.
