Objectives: to define principles and methods that allow heterogeneous database in the health sector to be interoperable.
Material and method: to design a component-based middleware able to provide flexible and efficient means of communication between end-users and databases, and that exploits the standard nomenclatures of the health sector.
Results: according to these principles, to implement a prototype of a tumor sample bank in the University hospitals of Marseille, France.
Discussion: to discuss the benefits that the approach brings and the progress in prototyping.