Table A

Table A Change in diagnosis

Original diagnosis	New diagnosis
Gastrointestinal stromal tumour	Malignant solitary fibrous tumour
Fibrosarcoma versus synovial sarcoma	Synovial sarcoma
Primitive neuroectodermal tumour	Synovial sarcoma
Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumour	Metastatic melanoma

Table B Geographical source of referral of 79 online consultations

Geographical region	No (%)
United States and Canada	42 (53)
Europe	17 (21)
Asia	14 (18)
South America	3 (4)
Africa	2 (3)
Australia	1 (1)

Properties of website

Partners Online Specialty Consultations was designed as a store and forward internet browser based application. The website uses Microsoft active server pages with scalable scripting language. The active server pages communicate through intermediate objects called COM objects, which in turn connect to a Microsoft SQL database server.

The website uses 128 bit encryption. Physicians, patients, and administrators have access to aspects of the website appropriate to their needs. Security is further ensured by storing data on a storage device (Data Mover; EMC, Hopkinton, MA), which is separate from the application server. WebTrends, a standard web log analysis tool, was employed to determine the number of unique visitors to the site.