An international nursing informatics research collaboration between Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, USA and Allgemeine Krankenhaus Hospital in Vienna, Austria used data mining techniques called Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) to explore the relationship between clinical data variables and adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) in critically ill patients. Results of the study and logistics of international research collaboration will be presented at NI '97. The conceptual model, data mining methodology, and objectives for the collaboration are described here. © 1997, The authors.