Formmailer with medical data - php? rails? something else?

Not to say that you shouldn't build it yourself but you might consider using http://www.wufoo.com/

If you concerned with blending the look into your existing design then you would want to look at your CSS. Wufoo forms can be used "naked" or without CSS so that you can allow your own CSS to affect the look and thus blend the form into your site's design in an attractive way.

If it is already built on PHP, I would stick with that unless you do want to rebuild it from scratch, as you said.

If this is simply a test project, do a google search for good security measures to take when submitting data, whether to a database or to be emailed. Also, remember that you don't want to send sensitive data by email, so avoid it if possible.

That being said, security is something that cannot be take lightly, specifically with medical data. If the medical data contains personal information, or is patient records, etc, it will have to be HIPPA compliant. This requires extensive logging of all data input into the database as well as logging of any changes. These logs will need to contain, at least, who made the change, what they changed, what the value was before, etc.. Obviously this will need to be very secure, preferably behind a SSL.

Keep in mind, if you're doing more that emailing the form info to someone, which in itself is not very secure, you will need a backend database to store the information. You can use something like MySQL or another database. Depending on the data being sent, you will want to encrypt/salt it.

As far as spam is concerned, you will want to use a captcha, or other authentication to avoid spam being sent from the form. You can google search "Prevent form spam without captcha."

Good luck.

Thank you both very much for your answers. I had a look at wufoo and like the idea of easy form creation. However this solution is not a viable one for me in this case as wufoo collects the entered data and makes the websiteowner responsible :-) Nevertheless it seems to be a neat option in situations differing from this one.

As Jaques proposed I think I will go with PHP and some https solution together with a captcha.... HIPPA does not apply in my case but I will check the relevant articles for Germany.

Thanks again to both of you!